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SILAS WRIGHT 



V 



A LIFE 



OF 



Silas Wright 

1795-1847 

United States Senator from New York 1833-1844 
Governor of the State of New York 1844-1846 



BY 



William Estabrook Chancellor 

Author of "Our Presidents and Their OfiBce", etc. Member, Authors 
Club, London, Eng., Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C, etc. 



^^Man of the millions , thou art lost too soon.*' 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

*'J 7nean to walk in the footsteps of Silas 
Wright:* 

William Sttlzer 



1913 
William C. O'Donnell, Jr., Publisher 

NEW YORK 






- u 

)CI.A;354106^/ 



Pithy Sayings of Silas Wright. 

''I have never inquired into the degrees of 
blood of sheep or of men." 

House, April, 1828. 
''Wrong acts never serve a good cause." 

Proclamation, Aug., 1846. 
"Our principles possess a strength with our 
people that our men do not. ' ' 

Correspondence, Feb., 1847. 
"General averages are most deceptive 
guides." 

Senate Speech, April, 1844. 
' ' Stability is essential to healthful commerce. 
Fluctuations interrupt its channels and increase 
its hazards." 

Senate Speech, April, 1844. 
"The sponge of the bankrupt law has wiped 
away the record of hopeless debt." 

Senate Speech, April, 1844. 
"Is it possible that a country can be taxed 
into prosperity?" 

Senate Speech, April, 1844. 
"Equally with the legal, the medical, and the 
clerical professions, the agricultural requires a 
thorough and systematic education." 
Posthumous Address, Saratoga, Sept., 1847. 

Copyright, 1913, by 
WILLIAM E. CHANCELLOR 



The Lost Statesjjian 

By John Greenleaf Whittier 

Lines written upon the occasion of the death of Gov- 
ernor Silas Wright, August 27th, 1847 (bom 1795). 

As they who, tossing midst the storm of night, 

While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone, 

Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone. 

So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed. 

In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light 

Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon, 

While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight. 

And day by day, within thy spirit grew 

A boiler hope than young Ambition knew, 

As through thy rural quiet, not in vain. 

Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain, 

Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon! 

Portents at which the bravest stand aghast, — 

The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast. 

Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong. 

Suddenly summoned to the burial bed. 

Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long, 

Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead. 

Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host? 

Who wear the mantle of the leader lost? 

Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice 

Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack 

Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back 

The wrong which, through His poor ones, reaches Him; 

Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim, 

And wave them high across the abysmal black. 

Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice. 

Written 10th month, 1847. 



Genealogy of Silas Wright in 
the Paternal Line. 

Lived in 

Mass. Samuel Wright, emigrated to Boston 1630, died 1665 

do. Samuel, junior, born about 1635, was killed 1675 

do. Joseph, do. 1665, died 1697 

do. Samuel, do. 1690, do. after 1740 

do. Samuel, junior, do. 1725, died 

Vermont Silas, do. 1755, died 1840 

NewYork Silas, junior, born May 24, 1795, died Aug. 27, 1847 



Governors of Presidents of 

New York State the United States 

during the political career of Silas Wright. 
De Witt Clinton 1817-1821 Anti-Fed. James Monroe 

Joseph C. Yates 1822-1823 Dem. 1817-1825 

De Witt Clinton 1824-1827 Anti-Fed. '^°^" ?8''25-7829'^^'"' 
Nathaniel Pitcher 1828 Dem. Andrew Jackson 

Martin Van Buren ,1829-1830 Dem. 1829-1837 

T^ rr. rru 1001 1000 T^ Martin Vau Burcn 

Enos T. Throop 1831-1832 Dem. 1837-1841 

William L. Marcy 1833-1838 Dem. William Henry Harrison 

William H. Seward 1839-1842 Whig. ^^^^ 

William C. Bouck 1843-1844 Dem. "^Isll-Tsir 

Silas Wright, jr. 1845-1846 Dem. James Knox Polk 

John Young 1847-1848 Dem. 1845-1849 



Annals of the Life of 
Silas Wright. 

May 25, 1795 Born at Amherst, Massachusetts. 

1796 Removed to Weybridge, Vermont. 

1809 Entered Middlebury, Vermont, Academy. 

1811 Entered do. College. 

1811—1815 Taught school in Vermont, winter terms. 

1815 Was graduated from college. 

1815—1819 Studied law, taught school, admitted to 

practice in January, 1819, at Sandy Hill, 
New York. 

October, 1819 Admitted to practice at Canton, Saint Law- 
rence County, New York State and resided 
there as home until his death. 

February, 1821 Surrogate Saint Lawrence County. 

until 1825 Also justice of the peace and commissioner 
of deeds. 

Also postmaster. 

Also pathmaster (roadmaker). 
1821-1823 Town clerk. 

Also inspector of public schools. 
1822 Captain of militia. Major, same year. 

1826 Colonel. 

1827—1829 Brigadier-general of militia. 

1823—1827 Member New York State Senate. 

1827—1829 Member House of Representatives in 

Congress. 
1829—1833 Comptroller State of New York. 

Jan., 4, 1833 Senator of the United States from New 
until Dec. , 1844 York. 

Sept., 11, 1833 Married Clarissa Moody of Canton. 
1845—1846 Governor of New York State. 

1846 Renominated but defeated. 

Aug. , 27, 1847 Died of heart disease at Canton. 



Annals of New York State 

during the political career of Silas Wright 

1820 Population, 1,372,111. 

1821 Constitutional Convention; Federalism ceased to exist. 

1825 Erie Canal opened by DeWitt Clinton. 
Gas introduced into New York City, 

1826 Anti-Masonry furore. 

1827 Slavery was abolished. 

1829 State had 48 banks. 

1830 Albany and Schenectady Railway opened. 
Horse-drawn street cars started in New York City. 

1834 Albany Regency established. 

Calhoun, V. Pres., gave casting vote to prevent ser- 
vice of Van Buren as minister to England. 

1835 $20,000,000 fire in New York City. 

1837 The Panic. 

1838 Seward, first Whig governor. 

1841 State Treasury insolvent; payments suspended. 

Erie Railway suspended work, despite loan by State of 
$3,000,000 in 1836. 

1842 Anti-Rent disturbances, 
to 

1852 

1846 Constitutional Convention abolished court of chancery; 
reduced power of governor to appoint officers, substi- 
tuting popular election; ended special charters and 
established general incorporation laws ; and limited 
debt-making powers of the legislature. 
1850 Average size of farms 112 acres. 

Banking capital $56,000,000. 244 banks. 
Annual amount expended for schools $2,630,000. 
Population 3,097,394. 



Annals of the United States 

During the political career of Silas Wright 

1820 Population, 9,700,000. 

Missouri Compromise (leader, Henry Clay.) 

821-5 "Era of Good Feeling" (Second administration of 
James Monroe.) 

1821 Andrew Jackson military governor of Florida. 

1822 National Road extended. 

1823 Monroe Doctrine published (drafted by J. Q. Adams. ) 

1826 Temperance reform begun (leader, Lyman Beecher.) 

Attempted Pan-American Congress at Panama (J. Q. 
Adams. ) 

1828 "Tariff of Abominations" enacted (Silas Wright, 
H. of R.) 

"Rotation in Office" and " Spoils System " (Andrew 
Jackson.) 

1830 Webster-Hayne Constitutional debate in Senate. 
Steam railroad operated (engineer, Peter Cooper.) 
320,000 free negroes, 2,000,000 negro slaves, 

1831 Jan. 1, William Lloyd Garrison began to publish 

"The Liberator" in Boston 

Chloroform first used in New York hospitals. 

1831-40 375,000 whites went west and north from Virginia 
and 200,000 negroes were sold south. 

Average annual inter-state slave trade, $100,000,000, 

Almost 2,000,000 foreigners came from Europe. 

1833 Georgia (advised by Andrew Jackson) nullified an 

order of U. S. Supreme Court (John Marshall, C. J.) 

1834 Reaper invented (Cyrus McCormick.) 

1835 Marshall died, and R. B. Taney became Chief Justice. 
Coal in commercial use. 

1836 "Remember the Alamo" (Davy Crockett.) 
Charter of Bank of U. S. expired without renewal. 
Height of speculation in public lands. 



1837 "The Panic." 

Owen P. Lovejoy, abolitionist editor, murdered in 
Illinois. 

1838 Southern Indians transferred to Indian Territory. 

1838-42 Many State governments insolvent; total debts, 
$200,000,000. 

1839 Canadian government seized rebel vessel, "The 

Caroline," in American waters. Strong American 
movement to annex Canada. 50,000 men and 
$10,000,000 voted for war. No war. 

1840 In Harrison-Van Buren campaign, twelve times as 

many votes cast as in 1824. Manhood suffrage 

almost universal. 
Cotton down to 5 c. per lb. 
Mormons settled at Nauvoo (Holy City) (leader, 

Joseph Smith.) 
Cunard line of transatlantic steamers established. 
First independent Treasury (Benton and Wright. ) 
1842 Webster-Ashburton treaty as to Maine boundary. 

Dorr's Rebellion in R. I. Anti-Rent rioting in N. Y. 

1844 Electric telegraph operated ( S. F. B. Morse, inventor. ) 
Right of petition carried in House of Representatives 

(J. Q. Adams.) 

1845 Annexation of independent nation, Texas (Calhoun 

and Tyler. ) 
Postage reduced. Two zones — under 500 miles, 5c. ; 
over, 10c. 

1846 Sewing machine invented (Ehas Howe.) 
Tariff for revenue only (leader, Silas Wright.) 
Independent treasury permanently established 

(Benton and Wright.) 
Wilmot Proviso. 
Oregon boundary settled by treaty (James Buchanan, 

Secretary of State.) 

California won (J. C. Fremont, leader.) 

"Name J;he Spot" Resolutions in House of Repre- 
sentatives (Abraham Lincoln.) 

1847 Feb. 27, Zachary Taylor won Buena Vista. 
Aug. 20, Winfield Scott took the City of Mexico. 
Aug. 27, Silas Wright died. 

1850 Population, 23,200,000. 




ilag Mrigf)t. 



Introduction. 

A good public servant is one who thinks al- 
ways first of the general welfare and only second 
of himself; who thinks well and who accom- 
plishes accordingly. His rule of life is exactly 
the opposite of that of the man who first takes 
care of himself; though such a man often suc- 
ceeds in private affairs and even at times is 
highly useful to others in public or personal 
ways. 

Silas Wright was characteristically the good 
public servant who thought first of the welfare 
of the many and who never thought much of 
his own affairs ; for the public, he thought well 
and achieved many valuable things, as this brief 
record shows. 

To the present Governor of the State of New 
York we owe much for recalling to our minds 
the qualities and the services of one of his ablest 
and most honorable predecessors in what he 
properly styles "the next to the highest elective 
office of the land." Governor "William Sulzer 



12 SILAS WRIGHT 

has said that to him Silas Wright is the ideal of 
the statesman in whose footsteps he desires to 
follow. 

The repeated expression of admiration by a 
man in high and powerful office is in itself a 
matter of importance in that it creates an in- 
fluence upon the minds of many and affects the 
progress and development of public opinion. 
Likes and dislikes, admiration and scorn, love 
and hate reveal the dominant emotions and in- 
stincts of the individual, and from them may be 
read what the man is. What the ruler of a 
people is vitally concerns them. 

For three reasons, it happened to the writer 
of this book that the various remarks of Gov- 
ernor Sulzer respecting Silas Wright appealed 
to him profoundly. One was that several years 
of the youth of the writer were spent in the 
scenes familiar to the statesman in his early 
days and that he has often revisited them in 
later years. There is no more beautiful State 
in any and every season in the Union than that 
of the Green Mountains. There are many fami- 
lies of Wrights now in Massachusetts and in 
Vermont, and a sturdy, honest, amiable and com- 
petent race they are. A stronger reason was 
that the various historical studies that have led 
to the production of some half dozen volumes 
upon American themes brought the writer long 
ago to the opinion that Silas Wright was Presi- 
dential timber felled too early by death to real- 



SILAS WEIGHT 13 

ize tlie true purpose of his being. He had the 
largeness of life and the frank yet dignified 
bearing suitable in a President. To the writer 's 
thinking, Wright of New York and Benton of 
Missouri should be graded higher than Webster 
or Clay or any other men of their generation 
excepting only ''Old Hickory" himself, who as 
a man of action was a true genius. But the 
strongest reason that has led to this record con- 
sists in the opinion that in nearly every matter 
of importance Wright held the true principles 
of American democracy ; he was wiser than any 
other man of his times in respect to fundamen- 
tal political philosophy. If he had consented to 
serve upon the Supreme Court bench, as several 
Presidents requested, the history of our juris- 
prudence would probably have been different, 
and for the better. Why he declined to leave 
the Senate is recorded herein and perfectly illus- 
trates both his sense of honor and his sincere 
modesty. 

One beautiful fact about the life of Silas 
Wright is that it has no strain or stain of dis- 
honor or even of minor moral dereliction. The 
great manuscript volumes of his correspondence 
are fit for the reading of boys and girls. He 
was without any faults even of manners. And 
this goodness was entirely natural. He was 
simply good, loved fun and humor, worked in- 
dustriously, was sociable, liked to oblige per- 
sons, but was free from willingness to please 



14 SILAS WRIGHT 

them at the expense of any higher principle. 
He was, indeed, a rare character as well as a 
notably superior intellect. 

Town and county officer, State Senator, Con- 
gressman, United States Senator, Governor, 
Silas Wright went through life unspoiled not 
because he was free from temptation but be- 
cause the temptations that conquering marred 
the characters of many other men and to an 
extent explain their greater or less failure but 
because though he lived in the world and was 
a power in, yet in a true sense, he was not of 
it. He knew the game but would not play it. 
Let no man think that the second quarter of 
the nineteenth century in America was pecu- 
liarly free from sin and wickedness. Quite the 
contrary. It was an epoch of much baseness 
and shiftiness; it was conspicuously an epoch 
of low aims and of petty performance. 

It is good to dwell upon such lives and upon 
such men. To do so makes us think well of 
Americans and of humanity. 

But two biographies of Silas Wright have 
been published hitherto, both within a year or 
so of his death and both short, inadequate and 
uncritical. The earlier is by Jenkins and is 
well written ; the second by Hammond is largely 
but paraphrase of Jenkins's but is superior in 
that Hammond possessed a vast stock of politi- 
cal information with which to illuminate the 
personal record. Yet neither had access to 



SILAS WRIGHT 15 

the correspondence which was collected later. 
Neither of these men had a positive political 
pliilosophy of his own and strong convictions. 
So far as they were impartial, it was mainly the 
impartiality of indecision. Fortunately for 
themselves and for their readers, they drew 
admirably the personal outlines of a good, great 
man whom each of them loved and admired. 

It illustrates the incompetence of most bio- 
graphical work until the past few years of 
genetic science (including the theoretic art of 
human eugenics) that neither biographer men- 
tions so much as even the names of the mother 
and of the grandmothers of Silas Wright. Each 
is satisfied to record the tradition that his 
mother was an uncommonly able and well-edu- 
cated woman and that she loved this son with 
a peculiar tenderness as the best-born of her 
large family. It is doubtful whether now the 
lineage of Silas Wright in more than the pa- 
ternal male line can be recovered. The paternal 
lineage does not, however, wholly account for 
this Silas who went pioneering in statecraft and 
blazed a trail for many followers. 

Silas Wright was the original sound money 
Democrat; devised the independent treasury, 
separating banking from government; held the 
only defensible view of the tariff that any pro- 
tection not simply incidental to customs revenue 
duties is morally wicked and economically un- 
safe because it prevents a stable equilibrium 



16 SILAS WRIGHT 

of industry and trade; favored a free-labor 
West like the free-labor North and hoped for 
the disappearance of negro slavery in the South 
through the normal operation of ethical as well 
as of economic forces; feared corporations be- 
cause they are impersonal, adventurous, cruel 
and irresponsible, hated and fought corrupt ap- 
pointments to office and bribery and favoritism 
in office ; opposed and resisted public debts and 
the consequent establishment of a parasitic 
bondholding class ; encouraged independent pri- 
vate enterprise as the secret of national great- 
ness; believed in telling the people everything; 
and lived always a poor man on the level with 
all men. Such was the man who declined a 
Vice-Presidential nomination and an almost 
certain election rather than seem to acquiesce 
in the annexation of Texas and the extension 
of slavery. Only once was he defeated for 
office, that in the year of the tidal wave of 
distrust of the Democratic party that swept 
over the North because President Polk had de- 
liberately provoked the Mexican War. He was 
defeated in seeking reelection as Governor, and 
yet remained the most popular individual in 
New York State. 

When within a year Silas Wright, long-time 
Senator of the United States and once Governor 
of New York, died suddenly of heart disease 
developed by overwork in August in the hay- 
fields of his own wsmall farm, all the people of 



SILAS WRIGHT 17 

the State and many others elsewhere knew that 
the best-loved of American statesmen, the most 
available of all men for the Presidency itself, 
had been lost from a nation that needed him 
and still needs such men. 

That had he lived, he would have been nomi- 
nated in place of Cass in 1848 or of Pierce in 
1852 or of Buchanan in 1856, seems certain. 
With a man like Wright still strong in the Dem- 
ocratic party, there might have been no Repub- 
lican party in the field in 1856. This specula- 
tion upon alternative courses in history is of 
value only as showing the full measure of a man 
who dies before his time. 

In 1852, Clay passed away at seventy-five 
years of age, best remembered for the Compro- 
mise of 1850 ; in the same year, Webster died, — 
shall we remember him best for the seventh of 
March speech, 1850, delivered at sixty-eight 
years of age ? And Calhoun, born like Webster, 
in 1782, died in 1850. Benton, born in 1782, 
lived till 1858. Twelve years younger than any 
of these men, Wright died first. 

All the high services of Washington in the 
Federal Convention and as President came after 
the age when Wright's career ended. Young 
men and old men alike see these things; but 
middle-aged men in the full tide of mature life 
squander their strength unwittingly. Of this 
universal rule, the case of Wright is perhaps the 
most conspicuous in our political history. 



18 SILAS WEIGHT 

Silas Wright was one of those persons about 
whom children flock; whom churches ask to oc- 
cupy their pulpits ; to whom men tell their inner 
secrets and entrust their estates at death ; whom 
conventions ask to preside; to whom the sick 
cry for comfort; whom legislators put in the 
United States Senate; to whom college presi- 
idents go for advice; in whose offices young 
men seek to study their profession; whom edi- 
tors consult constantly ; who are asked to speak 
upon any and all occasions and before any and 
every kind of gathering ; whom the plain people 
elect to any and every office ; and whom for their 
common and uncommon sense and kindness, 
their own wives respect and love. 

Silas Wright was a free and honest man de- 
siring to see develop upon this continent a free 
and honest people. 

Wlien it must be said candidly of a great man 
that he was not much like any one else, it be- 
comes apparent that we have a genuine new 
character revealed. Such was Silas Wright, the 
migrant Yankee, who retained his good sense 
and genial social SAHipathy, retained individual 
initiative and self-reliance and gained the arts 
at once of serving and of ruling men. 



A Life of Silas Wright 

A Roll-Call of the Great. 

Silas Wright, United States Senator and Gov- 
ernor of New York, was born in 1795 and died 
in 1847. No more honorable name is known to 
the rolls of the Senate of the United States and 
of the State of New York governorship. From 
both the personal and the public points of view, 
no more generally satisfactory political career 
was ever lived in America than his. Silas 
Wright was at heart the plainest and kindest 
of men, with ability so great that he never 
seemed to be trying to succeed. He did things 
easily, all manner of things, as this record 
shows. He had ample time, so it always ap- 
peared, to do whatever the circumstances re- 
quired. And he was brave even to daring. 

The roll of the National Senate has many 
illustrious names — both Adamses, Oliver Ells- 
worth, Kufus King, Jonathan Trumbull (our 
''Brother Jonathan" of patriotic fame), An- 
drew Jackson, De Witt Clinton and many, many 
more, including Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, 
Thomas Hart Benton, Daniel Webster, and so 
on all the way to George F. Hoar and Jonathan 



20 SILAS WRIGHT 

P. Dolliver of recent times. Silas "Wright was 
the peer of these men and so recognized in his 
generation. But he lived too short a life to get 
his character and opinions fully into the record. 
It is the peculiar glory of New York, as indeed 
''the Empire State," that for all that is un- 
savory in her politics, she displays a roll of 
Governors not equalled by any other State, not 
even by Virginia or by Massachusetts, for high 
quality of intellect or for purity and courage 
of character, or for both. There were George 
and De Witt Clinton, Daniel D. Tompkins 
(afterwards Vice-President), Martin Van 
Buren, William L. Marcy, William H. Seward, 
John A. Dix, Samuel J. Tilden, Alonzo B. Cor- 
nell (founder of Cornell University), Grover 
Cleveland, Levi P. Morton (afterwards Vice- 
President), and Theodore Roosevelt. Three 
became President — Van Buren, Cleveland, and 
Roosevelt. One other was statistically and 
morally elected but legally and constitutionally 
counted out — Tilden. And one other would 
probably have become President but for an un- 
timely death — Silas Wright, the equal of any 
American statesman. The high achievement of 
Abraham Lincoln was all in the years of life 
that Silas Wright never saw, for he died at but 
fifty-two years of age. Plad he survived longer, 
probably Taylor would never have become 
President, nor Pierce, nor Buchanan. And 
probably in 1848 or in 1852 or in 1856 Silas 



SILAS WEIGHT 21 

Wriglit would have become President. The 
book of fate opened its pages otherwise for ns 
Americans; and it is unprofitable to speculate 
upon the ''if 's" of history. 

The Paternal Lineage of 
Silas Wright. 

Of the remoter ancestry of Silas Wright 
(whose two names beget confidence), not 
much beyond names and dates of his pater- 
nal lineage in America is known. Samuel 
Wright adventured probably as a Puritan from 
England to Boston in 1630, though by some he 
is accounted a Separatist and Pilgrim. Not 
many years later he went pioneering to North- 
ampton, where he lived as a farmer and died in 
1665. 

His son Samuel Wright, junior, was killed 
by the Indians in Northfield, near the New 
Hampshire line, September 2, 1675, leaving a 
son Joseph; when he was born is unknown; 
he died in 1697. His son Samuel, great-grand- 
son of the English immigrant, had a son Sam- 
uel, another junior, who removed from North- 
ampton to Amherst village, then politically a 
part of the famous and beautiful town of Old 
Hadley. TMs Samuel, junior, continued the 
farming of his ancestral line, but his own son 
Silas became a tanner, currier, and shoemaker — 
a worker in leather. He never went to school, 



22 SILAS WRIGHT 

but iu later youth learned from fellow-ap- 
prentices and journeymen how to read, 'rite, and 
do 'rithmetic — that is, ''cast accounts." He 
married well, choosing a girl of the neighbor- 
hood who had far more than ordinary talents 
and an unusual education for one of her sex. 
To them were born nine children, two of whom 
died in infancy. One of these children was 
Silas, junior; but apparently he was not the 
oldest son, despite his name. Tradition reports 
him as the third child. Silas was born May 24, 
1795. In March of the next year father and 
mother and growing family abandoned their 
friends and relatives and set out northward for 
Weybridge, Addison County, Vermont, and gave 
up the leather trade for the ancestral life upon 
the farm. 

From the Plain People. 

The reenforcement of the so-called ''upper 
classes" by variants from the masses is one of 
the significant features of human history. Dem- 
ocracy is good because it sets the process free 
and to an extent even encourages it. The aver- 
age voter feels inclined to favor just a little the 
superior man of his own origin as against the 
superior man who has had every youthful ad- 
vantage, or alleged advantage. It appears that 
the variations from the typical condition of 
farm-workers began in the case of Silas Wright 



SILAS WRIGHT 23 

with his mother strongly and with his father to 
a degree. 

The man who comes from long lines of man- 
ual outdoor laborers and of working wives and 
mothers usually possesses a stable nervous sys- 
tem and a competent set of muscles. He does 
not inherit overworked brain cells. He has a 
zest for life and therefore appreciating it, un- 
derstands it. 

It may be that the time will come when there 
shall be a nation among whom there shall be 
none undereducated,none whose brains have lain 
fallow, as it were, for many generations. There 
has never been any such nation yet; and one 
may question whether there would then be a sup- 
ply of men and women of such spontaneity and 
overflowing vital energy as were displayed, for 
example, by some great men of the time of Silas 
Wright. Are not the "plain people" needed 
as a reservoir, or perhaps better as a perennial 
fountain whence shall flow a fresh stream of the 
water of the life of genius and of pure morality? 

One who reflects upon the life of this states- 
man cannot well avoid comment upon the con- 
trast of the record of the rise into wide useful- 
ness and high service of such a man as Wright 
as compared with the records of typical men of 
power in the privileged classes of Europe, whose 
policies had been discarded but half a century 
earlier. In a way, our Senators are of the rank 
and influence of British Lords ; our Governors 



24 SILAS WRIGHT 

are of the rank and influence of Dukes and 
Earls. Some of our Senators and Governors 
have been as rich as Duke and Earl, and some 
have been as poor as the familiar *' impecu- 
nious lord ' ' of fiction and of fact. But between 
the two systems and their products there is a 
great gulf fixed; and in that great gulf, that 
bottomless abyss, America has thrown forever 
many a hindrance to human betterment. 

Silas Wright, son of long lines of pioneers, 
peasants, laborers, may well be cited as an 
example of the public advantage of the Ameri- 
can system of social and political equality. 

The Scenes of Youth. 

The village of Weybridge is just northeast 
of Middlebury upon Otter Creek. Across the 
hills, ten miles away, is Lake Champlain. It 
was a late winter trip of a hundred miles north- 
ward for the ambitious family. Due west across 
the Lake fifteen miles is Crown Point, and be- 
yond rise the Adirondacks. To the east, scarcely 
twenty miles away, runs due north and south 
the main range of the Green Mountains. Kil- 
lington Peak and curious Camel's Hump and 
splendid Mount Mansfield, four thousand feet 
high, are all within a day's journey of a stout 
man afoot. Ticonderoga is not quite twenty 
miles to the southeast. In this glorious land of 
mountain and valley, beautifully rural to this 



SILAS WRIGHT 25 

day, Silas Wright grew up, like many another 
youth of the region, to be a scholar, a thinker 
and a doer of the word. 

Student and Teacher. 

The boy was recognized as the genius of the 
family, and he alone was educated at academy 
and college. He was given his "freedom" to 
study and in a small measure financially helped. 
Completing the district school at fourteen years 
of age, he was sent to Middlebury Academy in 
1809 and in 1811 entered the College from which 
he was graduated in 1815, at just twenty years 
of age, in a class of thirty. He was one of the 
first Vermont Democrats, never a large party. 
Only three of his classmates shared his views. 
He got his Democracy with his father, how- 
ever, who served in the State Legislature from 
1800 to 1810, and who with his oldest son fought 
in "the War of 1812" at the battle of Platts- 
burgh, September, 1814. Plattsburgh was fifty 
miles to the north and across the Lake. 

Each winter when in college Silas, junior, 
taught school in Addison and Eutland Counties. 
Of this school teaching, nothing is heard even 
by tradition. He was probably as good a 
teacher in discipline that no one ever talked 
about him in any way whatever. Evidently, 
however, he did not care for the work. For his 
services perhaps he received as much as three 



26 SILAS WRIGHT 

dollars a week and free board in turn in the 
families of his pupils. All the teachers of the 
period in Vermont were either college or acad- 
emy students like himself, or broken-down 
preachers; if women, very young or very old. 
Full-grown, strong, and healthy men and women 
did not teach school; they could earn more 
money and they did command more respect 
doing almost anything else. 

By temperament, Silas Wright was not bom 
to be a teacher. He loved children always, and 
they always loved him. But he had no desire 
to control children or to guide youth. He was 
judicial rather than talkative; and though in 
a large way he was foresighted, he preferred 
to work upon immediate affairs. The good 
teacher knows that he is investing his time, la- 
bor and thoughts, for years and decades ahead, 
sowing seed that must die before it yields grain 
to the harvest. 

Perhaps half, certainly not many less than 
half, of the men who have become prominent in 
American public life have taught schools at 
least for brief periods. Historians and his- 
torical writers usually say that these statesmen 
felt the call to higher work or to a larger field 
of usefulness. Wherein law is higher or larger 
than teaching, no man can say. It is not so 
accounted in Germany. In the history of the 
human race it has not generally been so ac- 
counted. The elevation in 1913 of a lifelong 



SILAS WRIGHT 27 

teacher to be President of the United States 
has already done much to correct the peculiar 
notion of American writers. 

As for Silas Wright, he gave up teaching be- 
cause he did not like it well enough to continue 
in it, but he never felt that law and politics 
were a higher or a larger field than education. 

One generation needs to set its ablest men to 
law and politics, another to set them to business, 
and another to religion as leaders. The gen- 
eration of Silas Wright needed him in law ; and 
there he served admirably. But democracy 
dealing directly with human problems knows 
that there is no higher or lower, no larger or 
smaller, in such affairs of seriousness as law, 
medicine, journalism and the other professions. 

A Student of Law in New York State. 

Twenty miles southeastward, at the turn of 
the Hudson westward, is Sandy Hill. There 
in October, 1815, Wright began to study law 
with Henry C. Martindale, afterwards for sev- 
eral terms a member of the House of Represen- 
tatives in Congress. For Silas Wright it was 
intellectually a most fortunate experience that 
he was so well started, and equally fortunate 
that Roger Skinner, another lawyer of the vil- 
lage, afterwards a United States Circuit Judge, 
took him into his office to complete his bar 
preparation. He made other friends there also 



28 SILAS WRIGHT 

to help him forward iu later years. Thoroughly- 
equipped for practice, in January, 1819, he was 
admitted to the bar. 

Fortunate, indeed, is that young man who 
makes the right connections early in life. It is 
a matter seldom within his control. Many a 
youth of talent and of character is undiscovered, 
does not early receive the right guidance, fails 
to get under headway early enough to make a 
successful voyage of life. Such, however, was 
not the case with Wright. His early advisers 
in New York State were competent and pow- 
erful men ; and they remained his friends until 
death. Again and again, their influence in his 
behalf was felt. It was by no means his way 
to solicit influence, whether that of old friends 
or of new acquaintances. Nevertheless, one 
would form a distinctly false impression of the 
making of the career of Wright unless this gift 
of his of keeping friends as well as of making 
them, and this good fortune of being brought 
into association with men of standing are fully 
known and recognized. 



In Saint Lawrence County. 

But his physical health had been so consid- 
erably impaired that his friends set him on 
horseback to travel with a companion through 
the westward country to get well. He pro- 



SILAS WRIGHT 29 

ceeded to Lake Ontario, and then keeping north 
of the Adirondaeks, returned eastward alone. 
He had gone in all some two hundred miles when 
luck brought him to Canton, in Saint Lawrence 
County, where he came upon old friends from 
Weybridge. They offered to build in the wil- 
derness village an office building suitable for a 
young lawyer; and he accepted. The building 
had two rooms, in one of which he lodged. 

Perhaps the ancient yet ever young god, 
Cupid, somewhat influenced him, for he soon 
fell in love with a daughter of his chief bene- 
factor, Captain Medad Moody. Thus began a 
lifelong comradeship. They did not marry for 
years and years ; but it is an interesting feature 
of even his political correspondence that when- 
ever he was separated from this domestic lady, 
who disliked travel even after railroads came 
in, somewhere in each letter Silas Wright was 
likely to remark that he was ** lonesome." It 
was not that he liked to talk or to be talked to 
all the time, though he was sociable enough to 
enjoy conversation; but that Clarissa Moody 
became an indispensable part of his world. 
Without her, he did not feel at home. 

Of the personality of this lady, the corre- 
spondence still preserved shows much. She was 
but an occasional letter writer ; her letters were 
brief. But she had a pleasant manner of speech 
and of expression; and was solicitous of the 
welfare of her husband, being entirely content 



30 SILAS WEIGHT 

with her lot in life. Other than to be helpful 
and agreeable, and to be allowed to stay quietly 
at home, she seems to have had no especial de- 
sires. Though by no means given to public 
affairs, she seems to have understood the true 
worth of her husband and to have been his chief 
admirer, a very good quality in a wife. 

To be well-born and to be well-married — these 
are the two incomparable blessings. Each came 
to Silas Wright. Comparisons of the domestic 
households of statesmen are becoming far more 
common now than the}'- used to be upon the 
severe pages of history. Few men not well- 
married make great successes in life. '^Vhatever 
be the unhappy feature of their lives in this 
respect, its unfortunate effect is obvious. Silas 
Wright had an accomplished and cheerful help- 
meet as his most valuable asset. 

The Scenes of His Mature Life. 

Canton is upon the Grass Eiver, ten miles 
east of Black Lake, not quite twenty miles south 
of the Saint Lawrence. Half a hundred miles 
southeast are the finest features of the upper 
Adirondack region, — among them Sugar Loaf 
Mountain and Saranac Lake. Even Mount 
Marcy is but sixty miles away. The climate is 
dry, the air is bracing. The summer, though hot 
enough in the Saint Lawrence Valley, is short ; 



SILAS WEIGHT 31 

the winter is long and exhilarating. The entire 
region is a natural health resort. 

The soil of the valleys and of some of the 
uplands is fertile enough; but the range of 
crops is small. 

In this beautiful scene Silas Wright would 
settle down to enjoy himself and to work out 
the problems of life. 

While the office building was progressing, 
young Silas had ridden away horseback home; 
but he soon returned with his older brother 
Samuel for company on the way. Samuel had 
loaned him a wagon and horse for the journey. 
The wagon carried some household furniture 
and goods donated by a fond mother to her 
brightest son. 

Surrogate. 

The next year, 1820, Governor De Witt Clin- 
ton, Anti-federalist, appointed Wright surro- 
gate of the county. It was a noteworthy tribute 
to his winning and friendly qualities. Probably 
that brilliant politician hoped thereby to win a 
rising lawyer to his party. 

Silas Wright was now twenty-five years of 
age, of good height, well-built, of sturdy, 
yeoman carriage. Blue-eyed, sandy-haired, he 
was a typical Saxon. Lips thin and compressed, 
nose large but finely modeled, ears large but 
set close to his head, the man already was recog- 



32 SILAS WEIGHT 

nized as born to control because first of all able 
to control himself. 

The Clintons. 

For half a century George and De Witt Clin- 
ton, uncle and nephew, made a large part of the 
history of New York State and a considerable 
part of the history of the country. The former 
was the first Governor of the State, being elected 
in 1777. Of course, the Loyalists had not been 
allowed to take part in the very limited elections 
that were held, for in truth New York was pro- 
British. During the Eevolutionary War, George 
Clinton as general of militia saw much hard 
fighting and became a military hero in the pub- 
lic eye. Continuing as Governor until 1795, and 
serving again from 1801 to 1804, he projected 
the policies whence have come the canals and 
many other features of New York State devel- 
opment. For eight years from 1804 he was 
Vice-President of the United States. It was by 
his casting vote in the Senate that in 1811 the 
first Bank of the United States lost the renewal 
of its charter, for he was a strong State's 
rights man. It was one of his daughters whom 
Citizen Genet from France married. 

The Clintons were a numerous family as well 
as politically powerful and commercially rich. 
They constituted a great force in New York 



SILAS WEIGHT 33 

State, a force with which Silas Wright must 
reckon. 

De Witt Clinton was the favorite nephew of 
George and was for a considerable time his 
private secretary. By 1800, though but thirty- 
one years old, he had become the acknowledged 
Democratic leader of the State, which two years 
later sent him to the United States Senate. In 
the periods 1817-1822 and 1824-1828 he was 
Governor of New York. 

This brilliant statesman has many successes 
to his credit — the Erie Canal completed in 1826, 
and development of schools, among them. 

The Clintons, however, had ways with them 
that hardly win favor in our more sensitive 
times. They rode down opposition in true aris- 
tocratic fashion. They drove forward like 
rulers — like kings, in a way, kings by public 
acquiescence. 

De Witt Clinton lost a leg in 1818, and his 
health never recovered. He died suddenly in 
1828. But for the fact that New York was still 
less powerful in the nation than Pennsylvania, 
Virginia and Massachusetts and for this acci- 
dent, this most brilliant member of a remark- 
able family would probably have attained the 
Presidency itself. 

His death left Martin Van Buren master of 
the Albany Eegency and of the politics of New 
York State. 



34 SILAS WRIGHT 

Early Recipient of Many Military and 
Political Honors and Offices. 

Next year, honors and duties came fast. 
Wright was soon postmaster as well as justice 
of the peace and commissioner of deeds and sur- 
rogate. The pioneers recognized this man as a 
true type of civilization. In the same year, 
they made him town clerk and inspector of the 
common schools. Incidentally as it were, he be- 
came official roadmaker or ''pathmaster" for 
his neighborhood. 

New England town-meeting towns always 
have plenty of offices to allot to the various citi- 
zens — "free inhabitants" or ''electors," as they 
usually are styled. But they do not often give 
so many offices to one man, and then ask a State 
Governor and the United States Post Office head 
to appoint the man to yet other offices. 

Brigadier-General; State Senator; 
Congressman. 

Not only so; but in 1822 they must have a 
company of militia, and Silas Wright shall be 
captain. In this service he rose fast. Before 
the year was out he became major, in 1826 
colonel, and in 1827 brigadier-general for upper 
New York State, an office that he held until 1829, 



SILAS WRIGHT 35 

Tlie military record of Wright was one of 
which he thought least; but it seems to have 
had a considerable influence upon his character 
and career. The drill and drill left their mark 
upon his carriage and demeanor, and the friend- 
ships formed with officers and privates were 
never forgotten. 

Some there are who dream that before long 
there will come final peace to the world. Then 
arms and soldiers and battle will be no more. 
Such an idea was never entertained seriously 
by Silas Wright, and indeed has never been 
entertained generally by men who understand 
human nature. Wright hated war and always 
opposed anything and everything that looked 
toward war, including the threatened war with 
France in the time of Tyler and the war with 
Mexico into which Calhoun forced Polk. But 
he never supposed that warfare would cease. 

The blood lust is an inheritance of the sons of 
men, an instinct to be reckoned with ; a fact as 
real as hunger and cold. It must have uses in 
the mind of God. 

Wright believed in training militia to fight 
and to get wars done with quickly. 

It seems that he did everv kind of work well, 
or at least sufficiently well to please every one. 

And only part has been told. 

In 1823 his neighbors sent Silas to the State 
Legislature as Senator and kept him there until 
1827, when they sent him to the House of Rep- 



36 SILAS WEIGHT 

resentatives in Congress at "Washington, where 
he served a term while John Quincy Adams of 
Massachusetts, whom he greatly admired, was 
still President. 

The vigor and aloofness of the Massachusetts 
Yankee President, his absolute devotion to what 
he regarded as the public good and his own 
duty, appealed to the Massachusetts blood and 
tradition of the Congressman who still agreed 
with him upon the tariff, including the ''tariff of 
abominations ' ' in 1828, but whom he opposed in 
respect to internal improvements and to ap- 
pointments to office. 

So high was the state of popular favor for 
Silas Wright that it is said that no member of 
his military household, whether officer or pri- 
vate, ever voted for a political opponent in all 
this period. 

Yet Silas Wright, even in the month that he 
left the House of Representatives, was still but 
thirty-three years old. It does not appear that 
he had been a precocious child; but it does ap- 
pear that he came early to full maturity. 

Stories of Early Days. 

Some anecdotes of this period from 1820 to 
1829 may serve to illustrate this record of his 
character and of his conduct. 

There is the usual fisticuffs story. It appears 
that in his western trip in 1819 Wright was 



SILAS WRIGHT 37 

accompanied part of the way by another youth. 
They stopped at a little tavern in the backwoods 
and after supper found themselves surrounded 
by a group of men, mostly young like them- 
selves, who taunted ''the young sprigs of the 
law" for their fine clothes and for their elegant 
speech. Wright and his friend promptly chal- 
lenged one after another of the country bloods 
to fight with fists and whipped every one of 
them. This throws some light upon the extent 
of the impairment of the muscles of Silas and 
upon the nature of his ill-health, which was but 
temporary exhaustion from overstudy. Pos- 
sibly his school-teaching experiences had taught 
him how to whip opponents, for those were 
rough days, and many a teacher had to lay aside 
his rod and coat and fight some big recalcitrant 
pupil barehanded to a finish. Or he may have 
learned to fight at academy and college for 
pastime before the era of football. 

Though magistrate and surrogate, Wright did 
not hesitate to practice law ; but he seldom took 
a case into court. He became famous for ad- 
vising would-be litigants to keep out of court, 
and even as magistrate often persuaded both 
parties to come to terms amicably. Usually he 
took no fees for his advice ; and when he made 
any charges made them low. 

If any fell sick, Wright was the first of the 
neighbors, winter or summer, to go to the rescue, 
almost always walking afoot, though he had to 



V 



38 SILAS WRIGHT 

cover many miles. He was man-nurse and lay- 
physician for all the countryside. 

In 1827, when first elected to Congress, he got 
together one day in November all his memo- 
randa of bills due — not one of them being over 
$5 — and taking the total — some $600 — he opened 
the stove door and shoved them into the fire, 
remarking: ''Those men have all done more 
for me than I ever have done or can do for them. 
Let's forget it, and start anew." 

Thereafter he carried on almost no law prac- 
tice, devoting his time to the study of problems 
of statesmanship and to conference and to con- 
sultation with others. He was a faithful and 
laborious committee worker. 

Silas Wright never cared to get rich. He had 
almost no wants. He did not yet own a farm, 
as did nearly every one else; but in a way he 
farmed the Moody place, being one of those 
persons who are always busy yet have plenty of 
time for something more. Perhaps a very com- 
petent adviser explains in part the ease with 
which he went through all the affairs of life. 

The Democratic Movement. 

Earlier than this, in 1823, Wright had taken 
ground in favor of the election of the Presi- 
dential electors by the people rather tlian by the 
State Legislature. This was part and iDarcel of 
the Democratic movement for manhood suffrage 



SILAS WRIGHT 39 

that was to culminate in 1829 in the election of 
General Andrew Jackson to the Presidency. In 
this year, 1823, Wright was elected to the State 
Senate by the most northern district, compris- 
ing nine large but thinly settled counties, as an 
anti-Clintonian, at a time when De Witt Clinton 
was the great man of the State, elected because 
every one liked him. 

Through all these years, besides all his other 
offices, he found time, as has been noted above, 
to be local ''pathmaster," and in his road- 
making he worked himself, being an expert ox- 
team driver and ploughman. This contributed 
markedly to his fame and popularity. 

We, who in the twentieth century, read and 
write of the Honorable Silas Wright, one-tnne 
United States Senator and New York State Gov- 
ernor, need constantly to remember that to 
northern New York State, the whole Adirondack 
country, he was, first of all, ''Farmer" Wright 
and, second, ' * the country lawyer. ' ' Yet as the 
record shows, though essentially the provincial 
in his affections and in his manners, he was far 
more than the provincial in his mind. 

Always at Work. 

Silas Wright had the rare fortune to be bom 
with great abilities and yet to grow up with 
perfect unself -consciousness. He never thought 
well of himself ; he simply went and did the next 



40 SILAS WRIGHT 

thing. Like the Buddhist of India, in his creed 
was this principle: ''Whoever needs me com- 
mands me." There was no one event of self- 
sacrifice; he was too strong a man and in a 
measure throughout life too fortunate a man 
ever to sacrifice himself; and yet though he came 
of a long-lived race, he died untimely of weak- 
ness through overwork. The whole of his 
strength had been paid out. He could not rest 
or in any real sense ''loaf" and restore his 
strength. 

Other Anecdotes of Early Days. 

In October of the year 1828 the 7th Rifle 
Regiment was called to general review for a 
week The last day it is recorded that in the 
morning "the rain and hail fell in torrents, and 
the wind blew a hurricane." Every company 
but one took to the tents. But General Wright 
and his staff rode over the field and saluted that 
one company — the old company that he had 
organized years before as captain. Baring 
his head, he cried out: "That's right, boys. 
That's the kind of soldiers I like. I knew that 
I should have one company to review even if 
it rained pitchforks, unless they came tines 
downward. ' ' 

The storm cleared away. In the bright after- 
noon sunshine the regiment was reviewed com- 
plete. And the General remarked with his usual 



SILAS WRIGHT 41 



smile, as lie looked upon the lines : ' ' Those fel- 
lows got about as wet after all as I did." 

But for all his high offices in the militia, he 
never liked to be called ''general" and for all 
his high offices in civil life, he always delighted 
in being known as '*Mr. Wright" or just plain 
''Wright." There was no uncouthness about 
him ; he felt, however, that to be a genuine man 
is greater than to be a general or a governor. 

Once m this early period he had an ugly case 
to try in court, a civil action between two scoun- 
drels. In his final pleading he told the truth 
about each party to the suit; and he won. As 
they left the court, his client said: "I didn't 
hire you to rake my character, and I don't thank 
you for doing it. ' ' 

"You hired me to defend yourself and win," 
replied Wright, "and if I had palliated your 
side in the least, you would have lost. And, let 
me add, I hope you will so improve your conduct 
that you will never again be subjected to the 
same embarrassment." 

It is not surprising to learn that when the 
Presbyterian Church of Canton had no settled 
pastor, Silas Wright went into the pulpit weekly 
and read the printed sermon of some noted 
divine. Or that a stranger happening into town 
was accosted at once by some little boys who 
asked him: "Please tell us when Mr. Wright 
will get back." The village children were his 
playmates in his road-making and farming and 



42 SILAS WRIGHT 

even about his office when he was at home. Even 
at thirty years of age he was in a way a 
patriarch. 

Perhaps as interesting a story as any is this, 
though it relates to a much later period: 
While he was Senator, General Macomb from 
the distant South came to Canton in 1838 and 
went to the home of the Wrights. 

Of a workman on the place he asked for Mr. 
Wright. The workman pointed to a man work- 
ing in a mortar-bed. 

**But," said the stranger, '*I mean the 
Honorable Silas Wright." 

''Well, that's him." 

**You don't understand. I mean Senator 
Wright." 

''Well, that's Senator Wright." 

And so it was. 

Silas Wright seldom drove in a carriage and 
never owned such a vehicle. It was a joke with 
him that he liked his "wheelbarrow better than 
any coach." 



(( 



No Pledges or Promises." 



In one of his earliest letters as preserved in 
the invaluable manuscript collection at the New 
York Public Library, written at Canton, and 
addressed to Hon. A. C. Flagg at Plattsburg, 
an editorial "republican" friend, he wrote: 
"This much I dare to say, that if ever I was 



SILAS WRIGHT 43 

elected to any popular office, it will not be by- 
strength of pledges on my part; and when any 
body of men, assuming the right to nominate or 
elect, wish to use my name, they must do so 
from the confidence they place in my ability and 
integrity and not from tying me up with pledges 
and promises which the same principles that 
would allow me to make would permit me to 
break. " 

This Azariah C. Flagg to whom Wright sent 
so many letters and such long ones, and who 
was a great influence in his life, was a serious- 
minded man about five years his senior. By 
trade Flagg was a printer, but during the ''War 
of 1812 ' ' he became a newspaper publisher and 
editor. He held many public offices by appoint- 
ment, including those of Comptroller of New 
York State and also of New York City. His 
fame rests chiefly upon exceptional skill in 
financial matters. As a politician, he was quiet 
and shrewd. He opposed the Bank of the United 
States, favored the Erie Canal, and opposed the 
extension of slavery. 

But though he was so closely sympathetic 
with the views and sentiments of Silas Wright, 
he lacked the supreme gifts of the latter, as he 
himself well knew and cheerfully recognized. 

Next month, writing again to Flagg, after his 
election, he said: ''The support of Clinton 
County has been rendered against a candidate 
of their own and with an entire want of ac- 



44 SILAS WRIGHT 

quaintance with myself and mainly from their 
confidence that I am republican and that the 
opposite candidate is federal, without asking 
pledges or promises as a condition of that sup- 
port. This was republican, and I shall not 
forget it. This elevation of myself to the oflSce 
of Senator, you may rest assured, Sir, is pre- 
mature; but it is too late for me to back out. 
Want of experience and of proper qualifications 
will be conspicuous, but want of proper demo- 
cratic principles will not be felt. ' ' 

He was indeed inexperienced ; but he was able 
and willing to learn. Within a year the tone 
of his letters changes ; and we read of ''rascals" 
to be punished by ''finding a God in Israel." 

"Put Friends Into Office." 

From Canton, August 29, 1827, he wrote to 
Flagg, who had become Secretary of State: 
"On the subject of these appointments, you 
know well my mind. Give them to good, true 
and useful friends, who will enjoy the emolu- 
ment, if there is any, and who will use the influ- 
ence to our benefit. This is the long and short 
of the rule by which to act, and as you say, 
when our enemies accuse [us] of putting our 
friends [into office] instead of them [selves], 
never let them lie in telling the story." 

Without exactly this spirit. Federalist aris- 
tocracy and bureaucracy might never have 



SILAS WEIGHT 45 

ended. To change the ideas and manners of 
government, change the men. Government is 
not the private property of officeholders. 

In his correspondence, Wright was full of 
the spirit of fun and talked about meeting his 
friends soon again at their Albany home "to 
kick up a row." He speaks frankly out of an 
ingenuous heart: ''Politically, I have little to 
say; I am too mad to write sense upon that 
subject." And in his very next letter he sends an 
introduction for two young gentlemen who have 
been students of law in his office. He seems to 
have had time for all things. But he adds hon- 
estly and humorously that their success upon 
examination for the bar will be more probable 
if they are questioned upon democratic prin- 
ciples and politics than if they are questioned 
upon law. 

Democracy was not a mere word then; it 
meant a social change from class and in a way 
caste to equality. It was the watchword of 
fighting reformers. 

Democracy was opposed to aristocracy, which 
meant the inheritance of political and social 
privileges. It was opposed also to bureau- 
cracy, which meant government by clerks and 
officers upon tenure for life and, therefore, red 
tape, favoritism, incompetence, and many other 
familiar ills and evils. 

In 1827 democracy meant about what in 1811 
progressiveism meant. We who have been wit- 



46 SILAS WEIGHT 

nessing the change from progressiveism to 
Progressiveism, a change from a social move- 
ment to a political party, would do well to study 
the record of the change from democracy in 
1827 to the Democracy of 1844. 

As a democrat, Silas Wright saw the change 
of individuals as a necessity. It does not, how- 
ever, follow by any manner of means that in 
1913 we should abandon our civil service prin- 
ciples and undertake rotation in office. The 
social milieu is different. Our society is essen- 
tially democratic. 

His Political Letters. 

December 13, 1827, Wright, now become Rep- 
resentative, declares in a letter to Flagg: 
''Another administration is overturned, Mr. 
Speaker Taylor is destroyed, the great com- 
mercial State of New York is abandoned by 
her own representation and treachery and 
treason rule. This is what I delight in. I like 
to see the galled jade wince." 

Parochial, Not National. 

But seven days later he writes in a fine hand 
to Flagg a wonderful letter of some sixteen 
large pages, in which he sets forth fully his 
political ideas and plans. The general notion 
is, so he says, ''Save the State, and let the na- 
tion save itself. * * * Even M. V. B. [Martin 



SILAS WRIGHT 47 

Van Buren] would rather jeopardize the Presi- 
dential election itself than to risk a breaking 
up of our ranks at home." He complains bit- 
terly of President J. Q. Adams and Secretary 
of State Daniel Webster. ''AH say party is 
done away with, but come to selections for office, 
Federalists are never forgotten ; and we should 
suppose that in the doing away of party, the 
old line of Democrats was done away with by 
annihilation. ' ' He compares the President with 
General Jackson and says : "Either from choice 
or mere accident, OldHero keeps better company 
and relies upon better men for support. * * * 
Again, Mr Adams holds to the most extended 
construction of the Constitution in relation to 
the powers of the General Government, and to 
the most limited construction of the powers of 
the States." 

Silas Wright was a wit and at the end of this 
December letter says that he expects Flagg to 
have read it by April when the State Legis- 
lature adjourns. "Should you wish it, you 
may let the Comptroller read a few pages as 
he may get time in the course of the winter." 

On the Tariff. 

But a month later he writes another letter 
and a long one, in which he analyzes mathemat- 
ically the tariff question. He adds : ' ' The mere 
interests of a few men who have got into bad 



48 SILAS WRIGHT 

business, owe debts which they cannot pay, and 
who now with their creditors want Uncle Sam 
to help them out" seem only to be considered 
and not ''conscience or reason." 

The true character of the man is revealed in 
a sentence in a letter of February 6, 1828, from 
Washington: "It is not my habit to withhold 
my thoughts from my friends, or I could not 
keep my good feeling toward them. ' ' 

It was the great year of the passing of the 
"tariff of abominations," and the "tempera- 
ture" of Silas Wright, so he says, is "high." 
He calls the battle one "between the Farmers 
and the Manufacturers." 

In the debate upon this measure in the House 
of Representatives in April, 1828, Wright said : 
"I had supposed that when I put the American 
manufacturer upon a par with the foreigner (by 
duties), and not only so, but left against the 
foreigner the whole of the expense and charges 
of bringing his goods to our markets, I had 
granted a fair protection to our manufacturer, 
but not that I had thereby granted to him a 
monopoly. * * * I have never inquired into 
the degrees of blood of sheep or of men. * * * 
None of my ambition is drawn from considera- 
tions of blood, and it therefore never has been 
any part of my business to trace the blood of 
beasts or men. It never shall be any part of 
my business until that system of monopoly is 
established in this country which some ardently 



SILAS WEIGHT 49 

wish and so many loudly and boldly call for. 
When that time shall arrive, their blood may 
rate them among the monopolists. Then, too, 
the degrees of blood of my kindred, of my 
friends, may determine whether they are to 
labor in the factories or be ranked among the 
monopolists." 

The "tariff of abominations" appears to have 
averaged forty-one per cent. 

In 1828 Wright hurried from Washington to 
Canton to work for the nomination and election 
of Jackson. 

It was a time of great political commotion. 
Anti-Masonry, stirred by the alleged abduction 
and killing of William Morgan, who had given 
out its secrets, was at its height. De Witt 
Clinton had died, and Martin Van Buren had 
succeeded to the leadership. Wright himself 
barely won his reelection; indeed, it was dis- 
puted for some months. 

In December he wrote again from Washing- 
ton; and this picture is worth seeing: **The 
South Carolina and Georgia members have come 
on clad in their homespuns, a kind of coarse 
sattenette. This I like. If their revenge for 
the tariff is to be thus manifested, they will 
completely get the better of us sticklers, as 
this is truly practical tariff ism. ' ' 



50 SILAS WEIGHT 

Too Poor for High Office. 

Several letters passed between these two good 
friends respecting a nomination as Senator. 
December 19, 1828, the Congressman writes: 
"I do not want the ofiQce. The elevation is too 
great for my years connected with my poverty. 
The responsibilities are too fearful for my ex- 
perience upon this great political theater." 

There was doubtless entire truth in this state- 
ment about his financial affairs. The salary of 
members of Congress was but thirty-five hun- 
dred dollars, and in this period party candidates 
had no political funds from which to draw for 
expenses in campaigning. And there was en- 
tire candor in this statement about the Senate. 
Great as is the distance between Senate and 
House now, it was far greater before the Inter- 
State War. Then Senators considered them- 
selves in a conference between sovereign States 
federated but by no means nationalized. Rep- 
resentatives were merely popular delegates; 
Senators were ambassadors. 

Appointed Comptroller of 
New York State. 

In February, 1829, came the solution of his 
personal difficulties, for he was appointed Comp- 
troller of the State of New York ; and so ended 



SILAS WEIGHT 51 

the first political period in the life of Silas 
Wright. 

This wonderfully interesting correspondence 
with Flagg shows several things that must be 
known before Wright himself and his later 
career can be understood. 

In the first respect — and in a way it is but a 
trivial item — his handwriting greatly changed, 
indicating a very great change in his power of 
forth putting. He always wrote freely currente 
calamo. Not seldom, in his hurry, he omitted 
words. He was an accurate speller, and his 
handwriting was notably uniform. But there 
is a change in the size of his chirography, which 
grows far larger, and in the quantity of ink, 
which is more abundantly spent each year. He 
had been carefully feeling his way as his powers 
grew. 

It is not trivial that he began at Albany with 
principles and soon came to be personal and 
partisan, and that in Washington he was much 
mixed between a sense of principles and a sense 
of party needs. He was going to school to the 
world. And though he was an apt and sure, he 
was not a quick learner. 

Nor is it trivial that he himself saw and said 
that "we are all New Englanders and Yankees" 
at Canton and that in Washington he was a 
genuine New Yorker, no longer an Adams ' wor- 
shipper because Adams was from near Boston. 



52 SILAS WRIGHT 

"The Infamous Seventeen Senators" 

Silas Wright got into New York State and 
Washington national politics in sorry times of 
personal factionalism. He was enmeshed in 
circumstance. Even generous admirers cannot 
wholly approve his course in the matter of the 
'infamous seventeen Senators" at Albany in 
1824. Wright had been elected because he 
favored the popular election of Presidential 
electors; and yet upon March 10th, after long 
debates, he was one of seventeen who voted to 
postpone indefinitely the further consideration 
of the matter. Why? Because there had been 
a deadlock between several plans for such elec- 
tion, including one for a general State ticket 
and a majority of votes, another for choice of 
individual electors by districts, and a third for 
a general ticket with a plurality of votes. 

Public opinion was greatly against the ** sev- 
enteen Senators," and yet several of them were 
later elected to higher office. They had done the 
immediately practical thing and trusted to 
time for vindication. 

The Political Situation in the 
Country at Large. 

Nor is it easy to understand the tortuous 
course of Wright respecting the Presidential 
aspirations of William H. Crawford of Georgia, 



SILAS WRIGHT 53 

whom he had openly favored in the canvass- 
for-election period. Finally the Presidential 
election of 1824-1825 was effected in the House 
of Representatives, where New York State, for 
all her size and population, counted for no more 
than Rhode Island and Delaware. 

But it is easy to understand why his course 
in these and indeed other matters is not wholly 
approvable. He spoke truthfully when he con- 
fessed his inexperience. These were the years 
of his schooling for larger affairs. Without 
them, his total accomplishment would have been 
far less. 

The whole country was indeed shaping itself 
for manhood suffrage and for universal male 
democracy. The country itself was going to 
school. It took to itself a strange teacher, 
Andrew Jackson, the untaught man of blood 
and of temper, rejecting John Quincy Adams, 
the man of culture and of outward self-control. 

By thrusting Adams ignominiously out of the 
Presidency, the nation made it possible for a 
Massachusetts district to send the old man to 
Congress, where he became the fiery apostle of 
the democratic right of petition. There he 
fought year by year two great fights, one wrong 
for a protective tariff, even a prohibitive tariff ; 
and the other right, and the second was a thou- 
sand times more important to the welfare of a 
people than the first. Nations have long surr 
vived wicked statutes dealing with their mate- 



54 SILAS WRIGHT 

rial or economic affairs ; but no nation has ever 
long survived nor can ever survive long when 
the citizens have not free access to the ear and 
mind of the sovereign. 

Liberty is far more necessary than prosperity. 

Jackson as President and J. Q. Adams as 
Representative each stood for liberty. 

Canton, the County Scat. 

It was in this period of his tutelage by the 
world before he himself became in a true sense 
the guide and master of others that there oc- 
curred an incident finely illustrative of the 
fundamental character of the truly remarkable 
qualities of Silas "Wright. 

The State Legislature had passed an Act 
directing that the county seat of Saint Lawrence 
County should be transferred to a more central 
point for the convenience of the citizens than 
Ogdensburg. There was at once a prompt chal- 
lenge that Canton had no suitable building stone 
for the county buildings. In the New England 
style, Silas Wright called a meeting of the citi- 
zens of Canton and said as he closed: ''I will 
go to the stone quarry to-morrow morning with 
a spade, shovel, crowbar and pickax; who will 
go with me r ' 

The citizens cried out: '*We will all go." 

Next morning Silas went. That very day 
they quarried and transported to Canton, six 



SILAS WEIGHT 55 

miles away, twenty wagon loads of stone. Next 
day they moved eighty loads. The third day, 
one hundred and twenty loads. Silas Wright 
worked at that job twenty-one week days suc- 
cessively; and declined so much as a dollar of 
pay from the building commissioner. He re- 
fused to look upon government public work as 
the citizen's opportunity to get money. 



"The Albany Regency. 



j> 



In these early days of his experience in State 
and national politics. New York was divided 
politically, not only into Federalists and Repub- 
lican-Democrats, but also into ''Buck Tails" (as 
Silas Wright in his letters always wrote the 
name), and the rest, often called the Clinton- 
ians, later to be known as ''Hunkers." Thor- 
oughly to present this, in a measure now ob- 
scure, subject would be tedious and probably 
profitless. But the gist of the matter is that 
on the whole in 1816 the Tammany Society of 
New York city were Madisonians and therefore 
anti-Clintonians. Some of the members wore 
in their caps deer's tails, and hence were called 
"bucktails." These Buck Tails found their 
climax in the famous "Albany Regency," to 
which Silas Wright, who was a Bucktail, often 
referred in his correspondence. 

The Albany Regency had their headquarters 
at the Capital of New York State and for a 



56 SILAS WRIGHT 

considerable time Martin Van Buren was their 
leader. At the beginning of their power, they 
tried to make William H. Crawford President 
as against John Quincy Adams in 1824. 
Eventually by 1846, as the record shows, the 
struggle between the Bucktails and the Clin- 
tonians changed into one between the Barn- 
burners and the Hunkers. The barnburning 
simile refers to the man who burned his barn 
to the ground in order to get rid of the rats. 
The Barnburners were radicals ; they gathered 
to themselves the anti-renters, or those who 
were opposed to the seignorial rights of the 
Hudson river valley land-owning patroons. The 
Hunkers were the conservatives or ''standpat" 
successors of the aristocratic Federalists. Buck- 
tails of 1816, Barnburners of 1842, Liberty 
party men of 1846, Freesoilers of 1848, Repub- 
licans of 1856, constitute one historical sequence 
— radical. But anyone who attempts to work 
out the historical sequence of the conservatives 
soon finds himself in a maze of inexplicable con- 
fusion and of inextricable difficulty. 

From this brief summary it appears that we 
do not get all the inner struggle of political 
history by following national party names. 

This was indeed an era of what appear to us 
now as decentralized conditions. North and 
South alike, the States counted higher than the 
Nation. Throughout his entire life, even while 
Silas Wright was a practical but not a theoret- 



SILAS WRIGHT 57 

ical protectionist, he was in all Ms affiliations in 
politics a defender of State 's rights, a parochial 
or localist or decentralizationist. 

Upon first thought, it might appear that two 
years at Washington, with a reelection nar- 
rowly won and only with legal difficulty secured, 
would have made Silas Wright a master of na- 
tional politics. But, in truth, a two years' ex- 
perience in Washington, even in the days when 
the population of the United States was under 
thirteen millions in number, could not make a 
man familiar with American politics. The young 
man who wins in national politics does so from 
luck or favor, not by superior knowledge and 
seldom by merit. Silas Wright knew that so far 
he had been in only a primary school of politics. 

The Office of Comptroller. 

In 1829 he became comptroller ; and now life 
opened before him clearly and largely. In the 
State of New York, this office has always had 
many powers and a wide range of opportunities 
for acquaintance and friendship and consequent 
information. In this office, Wright sloughed off 
his hitherto oversensitiveness to persons and be- 
came a man of ideas and of principles. In it, he 
remained for years. He was but thirty-three 
years old upon assuming the office; yet it was 
generally still characteristically the era of 
young men. The average age of the Fathers of 



58 SILAS WRIGHT 

the Constitution of the United States was but 
thirty-seven. 

The statesman should not think too much of 
persons. Ideas construct, destroy and recon- 
struct the world. In the terms of universal 
history, the mission of the individual is to gen- 
erate or transmit ideas. 

The Canal Situation. 

The Comptroller of New York is next in power 
to the Governor. At this period, the State had 
many great new enterprises upon its hands ; and 
so far as they were financial, they came within 
the authority and control of the Comptroller. 
The Lake Erie and Lake Champlain canals had 
just been completed, and lateral branches were 
being undertaken or at least urged, — the Black 
River, the Chenango, the Crooked Lake, the 
Chemung, and the Genesee included. The New 
York State Comptroller was a member of the 
canal board. He was facing an annual deficit 
of $75,000 and new expenses involving several 
millions of dollars. The question at once arose 
of resuming the direct State tax of one mill in 
the dollar. The underlying question involved a 
principle, which was whether or not first to let 
the original canals extinguish the debt incurred 
by their construction or to proceed with the 
other canals until the system was complete, leav- 
ing posterity to pay off principal and interest. 



SILAS WEIGHT 59 

As a general proposition, Wright favored di- 
rect taxation because the people had to see it. 
He always favored the policy,— pay as you go. 
He was open, direct, practical and immediate in 
principle as in manners. 

In a famous report, Silas Wright laid down 
these propositions, viz. : 

1st. The route of any proposed canal should 
be feasible and the water supply secure and 
ample. 

2nd. The cost should be within the means of 
the State. 

3rd. The canal should fill an economic need 
and soon reimburse the State for all costs. 

In a general way, his report was pessimistic. 
It was certainly democratic in that he refused 
to believe that government is omnipotent. He 
was answered by a brilliant and eloquent com- 
mittee report of the New York State Senate ; and 
the Legislature prevailed against the State fi- 
nancial officer, its Secretary of the Treasury. 
Neither pessimist nor optimist proved correct. 
The canals earned far more than the comp- 
troller estimated and about as much less than 
the Legislature anticipated. 

United States Senator from 
New York. 

Comptroller Wright proved to be ''a watch- 
dog of the treasury. ' ' During the four years of 



60 SILAS WRIGHT 

his service, he so generally pleased the leading 
men of the State that early in 1833, by a large 
majority, the Legislature chose him to succeed 
United States Senator William L. Marcy who 
had been elected Governor in the fall of 1832. 
Seldom in the annals of New York State has any 
man ever been chosen Senator with so little op- 
position. 

The common man, hitherto shut out from the 
franchise and from public office, felt that the vic- 
tory of his party meant social equality and per- 
sonal freedom. Democracy was a missionary 
movement, a social regeneration, an uplift. Any 
who suppose that even Marcy meant by his say- 
ing what would be meant now, were it used for 
the first time, simply does not understand that 
the two political parties then represented two 
different social classes. Today, all parties are 
upon one plane. 

No Permanent Bondholders. 

In this period, the total State debt of New 
York was about seven and a half million dollars ; 
and Wright had opposed any increase for canals 
or anything else that would not surely pay the 
the interest and a sufficient profit to retire the 
original cost of each undertaking within fifteen 
years. He resented the idea of building-up a 
permanent bondholding class, living generation 
after generation upon the labor of others 



SILAS WRIGHT 61 

tlirougli interest collected as taxes. He re- 
sented also the idea of binding the obligations 
of the fathers upon the children's children. 

Democracy was getting rid of social classes 
based upon birth. Wright did not wish to estab- 
lish classes based upon wealth. 

He argued that public undertakings should be 
based upon means, not upon credit, and should 
be chargeable to known incomes and not to the 
general cost. He was in a term an anti-socialist, 
an individualist. 

New York was not yet, by far, the strongest 
State in the Union. She ranked scarcely upon 
even terms with Pennsylvania, Virginia and 
Massachusetts. Today, New York State, which 
owed nothing from 1893 to 1900, now owes one 
hundred six millions, and Massachusetts owes 
ninety millions. Both these States, with nearly 
all others, are plunging into new vast debts 
compared with which the amounts that worried 
Wright were trivial, even when due allowance 
is made for the differences in population and in 
the purchasing power of money. 

The Opinion of De Tocqueville. 

In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville of France pub- 
lished his famous book. The social conditions 
that he saw in America and recorded so acutely 
were the results of this democratic struggle for 
a century. Said he: "No profession exists in 



62 SILAS WRIGHT 

which men do not work for money, and this 
common remuneration gives to them all an air 
of resemblance. In America, no one is degraded 
because he works, for every one about him 
works also; nor is any one humiliated by the 
notion of receiving pay, for the President of the 
United States also works for pay. He is paid 
for issuing orders; other men, for obeying or- 
ders. In the United States professions are 
more or less laborious, more or less proj&table ; 
but they are never either high or low: every 
honest calling is honorable." 

The revolution was an accomplished fact; in 
its final shaping Silas Wright bore a part. 

Marriage, Sept. 11, 1833. 



Eight months after becoming United States 
Senator, Silas Wright, now thirty-seven years 
of age, married Clarissa Moody, in whose par- 
ents' home he had boarded when at Canton ever 
since his arrival there in 1819. Between them 
there had been a fourteen years' friendship, 
and that friendship, scarcely changed in quality 
even by marriage, continued to be the subject of 
the admiring conversation of all their neighbors 
and friends throughout the rest of the life of 
the statesman. The two were comrades. No 
children ever came to them ; it was their one and 
only unhappiness. 

In an age when nearly all men had large 



SILAS WRIGHT 63 

families, the childless lot of Wright was doubt- 
less a point of sympathy between Jackson and 
himself. Clay had eight children; Benton had 
a daughter, Jessie, almost as able as her bril- 
liant husband, John C. Fremont. 

Hitherto, Wright had been known as a farmer 
because of his great interest in the Moody farm. 
As a bachelor he had recently bought twenty 
acres of land; but now upon marriage, though 
setting out again for Washington, he acquired 
one hundred acres more, nearly all rough land, 
which he felt sure that he would enjoy clearing 
up and getting ready for tillage. His wife, who 
was genuinely domestic, also delighted in the 
prospect of establishing a home-farm of their 
own. 

These personal items display much of the 
character of Silas Wright. He would not marry 
until he could make a home and support a wife 
properly. But he was entirely faithful to his 
first and only love. Full of fun and enjoying 
the companionship of men, in an age not so care- 
ful as ours, all the records, whether of his own 
correspondence or that of those who knew him, 
and all the traditions show that Silas Wright 
had none of the vices and few of the foibles of 
the men of the times. He kept his escutcheon 
white. Upon investigation, even the stories of 
occasional hard-drinking are discovered to be 
false. During most of his life, his friends re- 
ported Wright as ' ' an obstinate teetotaler. ' ' 



64 SILAS WRIGHT 

Supreme Court, Senate and House of 
Representatives Compared. 

The vast Capitol at Washington shelters the 
Supreme Court, the Senate and the House of 
Representatives, three official bodies whose 
modes of conduct, and of business, tempers of 
mind and traditions constitute them worlds apart 
from one another. In a sense, the membership 
of each constitutes it a social club with charac- 
teristic manners and ideals. The Supreme 
Court is isolated in the severe solemnity of au- 
gust patriarchs, each absolutely sure of him- 
self. The House has always had an air of good 
fellowship, of physical activity and mental alert- 
ness. 

The Senate stands between these two bodies 
but nearer the Supreme Court than the House 
of Representatives in mood. In the year 1833, 
when Silas Wright entered this legislative 
chamber as a member, Senators still regarded 
themselves as the ambassadors of sovereign 
States in a confederated Union. He had been 
a member of the House just long enough, two 
years, to understand its mood and not long 
enough to become too much habituated to its 
free and democratic ways. And he had left it 
long enough ago, four years, to think the situ- 
ation at the Capitol over and yet not so long as 
to forget essential matters. Moreover, he was 
so young as for that very fact to be notable. 



SILAS WEIGHT 65 

Personal Appearance as Senator. 

In person, Senator Wright was a solid up- 
standing man, now slightly corpulent; and in 
manner, quiet and in a sense modest, though by 
no means timid. He had every quality for a 
great success save one; his voice was harsh. 
But it was a Senate affording apparently no 
opportunity for a new man to make any career. 
It was the Senate of the Twenty-second Con- 
gress, often accounted the ablest in our legis- 
lative history, for Webster, Clay, Calhoun and 
Benton were there, as well as lesser men still 
famous for eloquence and mastery, among them 
Preston and Bives. 

As Committee Worker and 
Correspondent. 

The success of Wright was largely due to his 
untiring industry in committee work. In this 
respect, he reminds one of Samuel Adams, the 
''master of Boston town meeting." He was 
also an inveterate letter-writer. As a faithful 
correspondent, he reminds one of the late Sena- 
tor Piatt of New York. Any one who wrote to 
him was sure of a reply. He kept himself in the 
closest touch with his constituency and entire 
acquaintance. He did this in a sincere spirit of 
good will to all men. 



66 SILAS WRIGHT 

Jackson and Wright. 

''Old Hero" had just been reelected Presi- 
dent ; and he was setting out even more terribly 
than ever to hunt down his enemies. Parties 
were just beginning to form again; and they 
formed mainly upon the line of his personality. 
Frail with the consumption from which he was 
to die at "The Hermitage," agitated with the 
inward wrath that shook him whenever the fre- 
quent image of his dead wife crossed his mind, 
"Old Hickory" never prosecuted any man-hunt 
more relentlessly than that of Nicholas Biddle, 
president of the United States Bank with its 
eighty millions of capital and deposits. This 
was his aggressive warfare. To trail and kill 
the Bank was his errand upon the warpath. 

The nullification matter was of the opposite 
kind, a defensive warfare. 

The place and work of Silas Wright, for 
eleven years United States Senator, can be un- 
derstood only when Andrew Jackson is under- 
stood, for it befell the New Yorker to become 
his spokesman in the Senate, in part, because 
he was his chosen confidant at the White House. 

Andrew Jackson was the most personal and 
sensitive of men, — like many another natural 
soldier. He had risen from nothing and no- 
where, and he meant to keep the path open for 
talent. He hated any assumption of superiority 
by anyone over anyone else, He had brought 



SILAS WEIGHT 67 

in the new day of American democracy when it 
was no longer a disgrace to be publicly ad- 
dressed by accepted socially inferior men. He 
had been a leveller. 

Jackson held life cheap and honor dear. He 
was a born duellist and feudist. 

But he was far more than a fighting man. In 
the soul of the born hunter of men was a fierce 
aspiration for justice through equality of op- 
portunity. His intellectual quality was keen 
enough to let him see the fallacies in paper 
money and unlimited credits, than which no 
wrongs can be greater to the poor. He desired 
sound money and honest business. And what- 
ever Andrew Jackson desired, he would work 
and fight and scheme to get. His desires and 
ideals obessed and enslaved him. 

Notwithstanding this, and, in a sense, contra- 
dictory to it, Jackson had a profound respect 
for law as such, especially law as applied to 
others. 

He had the valuable faculty of discerning and 
of using men. He was seldom deceived in men 
or misled by them. Of course, sometimes they 
used him to their own ends, but only inci- 
dentally. Let us find what personal fault we 
may with him, nevertheless, in his achieve- 
ments both as General and as President, the 
cool verdict of history is that he was almost 
uniformly right. Few Americans would dis- 



68 SILAS WRIGHT 

pute the place of Andrew Jackson as at least 
fourth in rank of Presidents. 

He was the hero incarnate of the democratic 
movement. He was the common man set free 
to vote and hold office and thereby to rule with 
the general consent of the governed. 

Such was the man who soon took Silas Wright 
to his heart and for whom the Senator worked 
diligently and, despite marvellous adversaries, 
successfully. 

At first thought it may seem indeed strange 
that two men, temperamentally so different, 
should be good friends; but they had qualities 
in common, — sincerity and honesty and faith in 
men, courage and industry and zeal. Wright 
was a generation younger and looked upon 
Jackson personally with veneration and love. 

Biddle and the Bank of the 
United States. 

First of their adversaries, there was Nicholas 
Biddle himself. He had been by election a 
member of the Pennsylvania Legislature fol- 
lowing service as secretary to Armstrong and 
Monroe as ministers to France. He was an 
excellent writer and a pleasant speaker. He 
had in truth all the fascinations of a man of the 
world. Often his personality has been said 
closely to resemble that of Lord Byron. Al- 
ready the Biddies were established as of the 



SILAS WEIGHT 69 

sacred circle of the Philadelphia-elect. When 
the war began with Andrew Jackson, the head 
of the great bank was still under fifty, being 
half a generation younger than the war hero. 

For the fourth decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury in America, it was indeed a great bank. 
Its assets were nearly eighty millions of dol- 
lars, while its liabilities were not quite thirty- 
eight millions. There was a clear surplus of 
over forty millions. The bank had a hundred 
branches, correspondents and depositories. One- 
third of the members of Congress owned stock 
in it. It was the official bank of the Nation. 
No twenty banks in America to-day combined 
would equal it in relative power. 

Such was the institution and such the man 
that Andrew Jackson of his own motion set 
out to destroy, and did destroy. Within ten 
years Nicholas Biddle had died disgraced and 
insolvent. 

The objections of the President to the bank 
were many. 

First, it was a monopoly. 

Second, it was a great credit factory. 

Third, it was perfectly corrupt both in busi- 
ness and in politics. 

Fourth, it was growing stronger and bolder. 
It was an issue between capitalism and democ- 
racy. 

His accusations included usury, drafts issued 
as currency, selling gold coin as bullion, trading 



70 SILAS WRIGHT 

in its own stocks, gifts to canals and to roads, 
trading in real estate, subsidizing newspapers, 
lending over three per cent, of its capital to 
a cousin of the President, lending money to 
Congressmen, and many, many other items. 

Daniel Webster "Black as Thunder." 

Next of the adversaries after Nicholas Biddle 
came Daniel Webster, accounted by many the 
greatest Senator the country has ever had. 
Webster was in the pay of the rising manufac- 
turers. Of a sombre presence, whom Wright 
described in debate as ''looking black as thun- 
der" and sounding as loud, always immensely 
dignified and serious, yet not without wit and 
satire, profoundly philosophical if not also 
learned, the Massachusetts Senator with his 
magnificently sonorous voice would have over- 
borne any other group of men ever in Wash- 
ington. But it so happened that certain other 
men were there. 

In one respect, the difference between Web- 
ster and Wright was antipodal. Webster had 
a portentous sense of his own importance; 
Wright did not think of himself. Webster was 
something of an actor; but of the histrionic 
Wright had no trace. 



SILAS WBIGHT 71 

Clay the Magnetic. 

Inclined usually to assist Webster and yet in 
a measure detracting from his splendor was 
Henry Clay, the most plausible and perhaps the 
most brilliant orator of American history. Like 
Webster, the Kentucky Senator had the singu- 
lar quality of personal magnetism, an irradia- 
ting personal effect indescribable yet undeniable. 
In fluency of speech, in rhetoric, in voice and 
elocution, and in tact. Clay overmatched even 
Webster; but he was less sincere and less 
strong. Neither had scruples respecting money 
or liquor ; but Clay was also notoriously lax in 
private morals. 

Like Jackson, Clay had charming personal 
manners ; but he was far less sincere than any 
of these great men. He spoke the ideas of the 
North in the tones and with the language of the 
South. 

Calhoun the Political Scientist. 

There also was Calhoun, among the greatest 
of Southerners, educated at Yale. The South 
Carolina Senator was a metaphysician, a politi- 
cal scientist and an ardent and skillful debater, 
an impressive combination. He was absolutely 
and inflexibly honest and righteous in intent. 
Over against the lurid Webster and the electric 
Clay, Calhoun shone like a white pillar of mar- 



72 SILAS WRIGHT 

ble. And yet, though Jackson, the Democrat, 
was against Webster and Clay, the Whigs, he 
personally hated Calhoun, also a Democrat, 
worse than either. 

This hatred was wholly personal and was due 
to his discovery that secretly in the Cabinet of 
Adams, Calhoun had opposed him and to his 
anger over the attitude of Calhoun in the Peggy 
O'Neill affair. Calhoun was essentially an 
aristocrat. As time, however, irons out the 
wrinkles of ancient controversy, humanity will 
think more highly of tliis man who faced facts 
straight and who never shrank from conse- 
quences. As high and clear a thinker as Web- 
ster, he saw yet further into the future. 

Benton the Statistician and Orator. 

Fourth, but not among the adversaries, there 
was Benton of Missouri, a still too much neg- 
lected figure. Benton was a diligent student, 
a careful thinker, a fine speaker, and f oresighted 
beyond Webster and Clay. Big and impressive, 
he was the artillery for Andrew Jackson. 
Wright did the lighter field fighting. 

Not many decades hence the center of social 
gravity in America will be securely established 
in the Middle West. Then it will be seen that 
Thomas Hart Benton was the most important 
statesman of the period. He was the Western 
expansionist, answering the ridicule of Webster 



SILAS WRIGHT 73 

with a red-hot flood of satire and eloquence all 
the more terrible because, beyond Webster, Ben- 
ton knew facts. Thirteen years older than 
Wright and surviving him for eleven more years 
of life, he fills a greater space in our history. 
But Benton was glad of the friendship and con- 
stant assistance of the New York Senator, and 
they stood shoulder to shoulder upon all im- 
portant matters. 

Over against Webster and Clay set Benton 
and Wright, with Calhoun in an equal place 
by himself. No other period could ever match 
these five Senators. Among them aU, in cer- 
tain qualities, Wright was first, — in service, 
common sense and poise, in closeness with hu- 
manity, in pure unselfishness. But Benton was 
master of more fields and themes than any one 
else, — Benton, who lived farthest west and in 
the newest country. 

It was but a small Senate, for there were as 
yet only twenty-four States in the Union. And 
yet at least three more able Senators require 
mention — Preston, whose perfervid oratory 
carried far in those times; Rives, eloquent 
apostle of Jeffersonianism, and Grundy, shrewd 
parliamentarian and skillful debater. All were 
men of whom history would say much but for 
the splendor of the great trio. 



74 SILAS WRIGHT 

"Wall Street" Figured in the Scene. 

The process by which Jackson undertook to 
destroy the Bank was by vetoes to prevent the 
renewal of its charter and by executive orders 
to withdraw the deposits of government 
moneys. 

As early as August, 1833, Senator Wright 
was sending to his ever faithful friend, A. C. 
Flagg, a letter that sounds wonderfully mod- 
ern. It contains this paragraph: ''I have 
rec'd a summons from the magician (Van 
Buren) to meet him somewhere in the vicinity 
preparatory to his writing to the President 
about the Bank, which I suppose of course 
means the deposits. I confess to you that that 
is one of the questions I am afraid of, and my 
fear wholly arises from the apprehension that 
some cursed Wall Street operations will be de- 
veloped as having taken place in anticipation of 
the action of the Government which will be 
made to appear to have a kind of 'wool' con- 
nection with the movement itself. I have sig- 
nified this apprehension to Mr. Van Buren, and 
I did so the more readily because I think it 
not unlike such men and mousers as Jas. A. 
Hamilton and Jake Hoyt to be concerned. I 
hope (that) all apprehension of this sort (is) 
wholly groundless, but you recollect I told you 
that a wise one at Washington urged upon me 
the indispensable necessity of an instantaneous 



SILAS WRIGHT 75 

removal and assigned as a reason that lie knew 
'friends of ours in Wall Street who had made 
contracts to deliver stock on a future day to 
such amounts that a rise of one per cent, would 
differ an individual $1000.' From all such 
'friends of ours,' speculators upon the actions 
of government and upon its legislation, Good 
Lord, deliver us. I hope, as I presume, it is 
not his intention to talk with me alone upon 
this subject, but that he has called a council 
of the Regency or that he is to do so. ' ' 

Some of the phrases and ideas are familiar 
indeed — ''cursed Wall Street operations," 
"a 'wool' connection," "a wise one," "deliver 
stocks on a future day," "speculators upon 
the action of government." 

This Hamilton was one of the eight children 
of Alexander Hamilton, whom fewer and fewer 
men rank as high as he was ranked by the Fed- 
eralists. Hoyt was a typical New York poli- 
tician. What "differ" means is obvious; but 
the word is no longer so used. 

There was to ensue one of the most violent 
periods of American politics and business. The 
deposits were withdrawn despite a struggle 
with Duane, Secretary of the Treasury, and 
with Congress. But the Bank proceeded, of 
course, with its legislative effort to secure a 
recharter and undertook through judicial meas- 
ures by mandamus and otherwise to compel the 
Government to restore the deposits. Duane 



76 SILAS WRIGHT 

resigned only to find himself "ostracized, dis- 
owned, outlawed on all sides." And Taney 
took his place and did the will of the master of 
millions of men. 

The Government Surplus. 

While this warfare was waging, many other 
questions came up. One of these was closely 
allied with the Bank matter. The Government 
had a surplus of funds apparently of forty 
millions of dollars and no debts; and it was 
proposed to give this surplus to the States, 
according to their representation in Congress. 
Against this proposition might be urged more 
reasons than one. It meant putting the sov- 
ereign States under the patronage of the fed- 
eral government; or in other words, taking an 
important step in the direction of converting 
the federation of United States into a Nation 
and the several States into provinces. Strict 
constructionists of the Constitution could not 
favor this. And grave questions arose as to 
how to make the distribution and upon what 
relative terms to the various States. 

The Treasury had placed the deposits with- 
drawn from the United States Bank in many 
various State Banks, which soon came to be 
known as ''pet banks." The total on deposit 
came to be forty millions of dollars, that is, 
the apparent bookkeeping surplus. The bank- 



SILAS WEIGHT 77 

ers used these funds for generous loans in tlieir 
communities, whence arose such a fever of 
speculation as has seldom been equalled in any 
land at any other time. 

Nullification. 

Yet more important than even the Bank and 
all the related questions was that of nullifica- 
tion. According to this doctrine, several States, 
indefinitely stated, might nullify an Act of 
Congress or an order of the General Govern- 
ment by refusing to execute it or by prevent- 
ing its execution. The Union was only a com- 
pact. In a letter upon this subject to Flagg, 
April, 1834, Senator Wright said: "It is a 
new declaration of independence by the Nulli- 
fiers. The truth is that ever since the Preston, 
Poindexter, McDuffie and Duff Green Jubilee 
in the City of brotherly love, the nullifiers have 
been crazy. The reception of those men there 
has induced Calhoun to believe that he can carry 
the north, and this is the open avowal. 

"Clay replied badly and crouchingly, and 
Webster looked as black as any Christian can." 

In 1832 the Tariff of Abominations had been 
tinkered till it was a little lower, but not enough 
lower to content the Southerners. Eaw mate- 
rials for manufacturers still came in free ; and 
the manufactured articles were protected. This, 
of course, helped the Northern manufacturers 



78 SILAS WRIGHT 

at the expense both of producers and of con- 
sumers everywhere. South Carolina replied by 
declaring that the federal revenue laws should 
not be enforced within her borders. On De- 
cember 11, 1832, President Jackson had issued 
his startling proclamation, which endeared him 
to the hearts of more people than even the New 
Orleans victory. In February, 1833, just after 
the entrance of Silas "Wright as a member, the 
Force Bill so-called had passed the Senate 32 
to 8. It was aimed to secure the collection of 
the revenue in South Carolina. 

The Unsolved Fundamental Problem 
of Sovereignty. 

Two schools of thought respecting the Consti- 
tution have always existed in the United States 
and are likely to exist for some time to come. 
Conventionally, it is said that one school be- 
lieves in ''strict construction," the other 
in "liberal construction" or interpretation of 
that primary document. The theory of nulli- 
fication strictly construes the Constitution. It 
is based upon the historical fact that King 
Charles I of England created "my Kingdom of 
Virginia," a sovereign and independent State, 
under the Crown but not under Parliament. The 
colonies were kingdoms; as such they were 
States, as the very name of our country, "the 
United States," implies. The States by the 



SILAS WEIGHT 79 

Constitution delegated powers to a central gov- 
ernment and thereby formed a league, but not 
a paramount State (or Nation) to be superior 
to them and whereby they were reduced to 
provinces or satrapies. It was evidently upon 
this theory that Texas, for ten years an inde- 
pendent nation, was admitted by joint resolu- 
tion of Congress into the union of equal States. 

In this period nearly all the leading states- 
men were strict constructionists. The high 
fame of Daniel Webster proceeded from the fact 
that he provided a new theory to fit a situation. 
With magnificent oratory he ''replied" to Cal- 
houn and to Hayne of South Carolina, ''ex- 
pounding" what the world soon realized, a 
compromise and transitional theory by which 
both the central government and the several 
States were accounted "sovereign," the central 
government in an ever- expanding field and the 
States in an ever-diminishing field. Such was 
the "Liberty and Union" he proclaimed. The 
Inter- State War settled the matter by creating 
a Nation with a people for whom the central 
government, hitherto without a people, became 
simply an instrument. Webster was a prophet 
of a future more near than he dreamed. A state 
is force, government is its means. 

Nevertheless, mere growth of population and 
persistent influence of climate and resources 
differentiating the people constantly tend to 
create a demand for more freedom for each of 



80 SILAS WEIGHT 

these subordinate and no longer independent 
States. The inherent contradiction of the 
American political organization constantly re- 
curs and renews its pressure upon public atten- 
tion. Even before the death of Silas Wright, 
and more vigorously soon afterward, the South 
itself, through the Fugitive Slave bills, was 
appealing to national power to force recalci- 
trant Northern States to return runaway 
property. 

Before nullification was abandoned as a the- 
ory and secession substituted both as a theory 
and as a practical measure, the South, through 
national power, sought to force its peculiar so- 
cial institution into the national territories. 

Until the principle of State 's rights is clearly 
seen to be the defence of provincial liberties, 
one is apt to be misled by the constant iteration 
of the arguments and phrases of the centraliza- 
tionists. It is so easy to think in the terms of 
''a national unit" that already Washington is 
suffering from a congestion of duties and of 
interests. Railroad and telegraph have facili- 
tated the issuance of orders from a central of- 
fice ; but they have equally facilitated the arrival 
of suitors for hearings and of prayers for help. 
The people outnumber the '* government" 
twenty to one. 

Silas Wright held what was the standard view 
of the times and looked upon all centralizing 
movements and measures, direct and indirect, 



SILAS WEIGHT 81 

with disfavor and met most of them with oppo- 
sition. Yet so far have we gone in centraliza- 
tion that already the national government, no 
longer simply federal, costs nearly as much as 
all other governments combined. It certainly 
does not produce a benefit proportionately. 

The very argument that John C. Calhoun of 
South Carolina so ably and adequately used for 
the support of nullification and against a high 
tariff was used within less than a decade by 
William H. Seward of New York to resist the 
recovery of slaves. 

In truth, it is possible for a vast empire to 
cohere for centuries only when the central gov- 
ernment is of but limited powers and concerns. 
A much-meddling central government dissipates 
its energies and cannot be strong. And also, in 
truth, a people remains strong only when it is 
wisely governed throughout its habitat; to se- 
cure this it must be governed locally by native 
residents intimately familiar with special 
conditions. 

State sovereignty is near to the hearts of 
men. We love little lands, — Virginia or New 
England or California, the lands that we can 
know and whose sentiments pulse in our blood. 
For purposes of international war, let the New 
Yorker be first of all an American ; but in nearly 
all matters of peace, this Union prospers most 
when the inhabitants of its many several States 
are loyal to local interests. 



82 SILAS WRIGHT 

We feel the grandiose appeal of national 
ideas spread upon the pages of metropolitan 
dailies, of national monthlies, or delivered elo- 
quently from the platform before vast audi- 
ences; but we are most concerned with local 
laws, customs and ideas. Greatly important to 
us as are the questions who is President and 
what is the party complexion of Congress, it is 
more important to us whether our local board 
of health has ample power and intelligence and 
character to suppress a nuisance or to over- 
come an epidemic. It concerns us much whether 
we have fiat money from Washington, but it 
concerns us more whether on the average one 
marriage in five or one marriage in fifty is bro- 
ken by legal divorce permitting each party to 
marry again. 

In all things, however, there is somewhere a 
just balance; and decentralizationist though he 
was, when Andrew Jackson declaimed his toast, 
''The Union of States, it must and shall be pre- 
served," Silas Wright applauded. He was a 
unionist, though not a nationalist ; and he knew 
the distinction. 

He fully agreed with President Jackson in 
his Proclamation that nullification was ''incom- 
patible with the existence of the Union, con- 
tradicted expressly by the letter of the Consti- 
tution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent 
with every principle in it and destructive of the 
great object for which it was formed. ' ' 



SILAS WRIGHT 83 

With most other statesmen, Senator Wright 
hoped for ''a way to let South Carolina down 
easily" while preserving the dignity of the 
central government. 

An Ad Valorem Tariff. 

Then Henry Clay, father of ''the American 
system," came forward to fix matters up with 
a compromise. The bill apparently abandoned 
the protective principle with its specific duties 
for a revenue plan with ad valorem duties. 
Wright served upon the committee that had the 
bill in charge and had often considered the 
subject before. He was keen enough to see the 
impossibility of dealing justly with a tariff sys- 
tem based upon values. What values? Those at 
wholesale abroad? Or at retail? At the place 
of manufacture, or at some central market city, 
or at the harbor of export? Those at wholesale 
upon the American coast? Or at retail in the 
port of entry? Suppose manufacturers, or ex- 
porters, or importers disagree as to values: 
what shall decide? 

Protectionism. 

The fundamental fallacy of protectionism 
Wright did not see or at least never cared to 
consider. By it artificial profits are gathered 
together into a manufacturer's capital, or 



84 SILAS WEIGHT 

prospective profits are capitalized into banking 
credit. Out of this wealth the manufacturer 
is able to pay wages and to buy goods. He is 
legally authorized to pillage. Out of his largess 
he may pay what wages and concede what prices 
within the market range he chooses. The pro- 
tected manufacturer becomes a protege of the 
Federal Government and a parasite upon the 
economic life of the people. His personal in- 
terest becomes a special interest of the states- 
men and politicians at Washington. Senators 
and Kepresentatives are tempted to become 
agents of the will of the manufacturing class. 
Not only so, but the successful proteges of 
government so manipulate nominations and in- 
fluence elections that their own paid attorneys 
become legislators in Congress : such were both 
Webster and Clay, as well as hundreds of lesser 
men since protection became the American 
system. 

But though Wright did not worry himself 
about the fallacy of protectionism as a theory, 
he was exceedingly active in respect to one of 
its fallacies in practice. In his speeches and 
in his correspondence he frequently asked, Who 
shall say what per cent, of protection is really 
needed? Shall it be only the protection that 
will keep men of fair ability and industry afloat 
in the ocean of competition; or shall it be the 
protection required by fools, by the incompe- 
tent? 



SILAS WEIGHT 85 

Eecently we have heard it said by a President 
of the United States that the protective tariff 
should be high enough to secure to the manu- 
facturer a reasonable profit. It would be but 
to paraphrase the familiar remarks and ques- 
tions of Silas Wright to proceed in this fashion 
— Which style of manufacturer is to have the 
reasonable profit, the able man or the fool? If 
the fool, then shall the able man be assisted, 
when he can, to make a thousand per cent a 
year? If the able man, then shall the fool be 
deprived of the blessed help of a protecting 
government? When government has secured by 
law a reasonable profit to a certain established 
grade of manufacturer, shall it not proceed to 
guarantee reasonable profits to farmers, to law- 
yers, to tradespeople, to teachers, to journal- 
ists? Good sooth, are not these so dear to gov- 
ernment as manufacturers ? But for the rise of 
the slavery struggle and its consequences in a 
vast national debt and in a vast pension system, 
the tariff problem would have been solved half 
a century ago by a disclosure of its fallacy. In 
a world of changing supply and demand, no law- 
made price can long remain useful ; hence, it can 
never be just. 

Clay and the American System. 

It is one of the strange features of the his- 
tory of protection in these early decades that 



86 SILAS WRIGHT 

Henry Clay saw the fallacy of the theory itself. 
In consequence he set up protection by whole- 
sale, protection for every one. Early in the 
administration of Van Buren he once exclaimed 
rhapsodically, rapturously in the Senate : ' ' Peo- 
ple, States, Union, banks — all are entitled to 
the protecting care of a paternal government." 
Clay meant to insure a good living for every 
one, an easy living securely and properly or- 
dered by law. 

One feature of the Clay Compromise bill 
earlier than this deliverance that Wright ex- 
pressly ridiculed as puerile was a provision to 
reduce the tariff a little every year for eight 
years. Yet the bill passed with the support 
of Calhoun and of the Southerners. 

The Censure of Jackson 
by the Senate. 

Not long afterwards Clay introduced the 
famous resolution of censure against President 
Jackson : ' ' Resolved, That the President of the 
United States, in the late executive proceed- 
ings in relation to the public revenue, has as- 
sumed upon himself authority and power not 
conferred by the constitution and the laws but 
in derogation of both. ' ' 

The battle over this resolution lasted for 
months. It brought up many questions: (1) 
The relation sustained with the Bank by the 



SILAS WRIGHT 87 

government as its fiscal agent; (2) the power 
of the Secretary of the Treasury to control the 
funds as compared with the power of Congress, 
especially with that of the House of Represen- 
tatives, the financial body according to the 
Constitution; (3) the power of the President 
to appoint to ofiice and to remove therefrom, 
for ''Old Hero" had put out Duane and put 
in Taney in order to effect his will in respect 
to the deposits ; (4) and the right of the Senate 
to censure a President, since only the House 
could impeach him. 

The President controlled the House of Rep- 
resentatives, but the Senate was against him. 

Upon March 26, 1834, Senator Wright made 
one of his most celebrated speeches, objecting 
to censure without a hearing and closing in 
these words: ''Grant to him, I beseech you, 
Mr. President — I beseech the Senate — grant to 
that old man the privilege of a trial now. Con- 
demn him not unheard, and without the pretence 
of a constitutional accusation. His rivalships 
are ended. He asks no more of worldly honors. 
'He has done the state some service.' Age has 
crept upon him now, and he approaches the 
grave. Let him enjoy, during the short remain- 
der of his stay upon earth, the right secured 
to him by the Constitution that he has so often 
and so gallantly defended ; and if, indeed, he be 
a criminal, let his conviction precede his 
sentence. ' ' 



88 SILAS WEIGHT 

The appeal was the usual one in the case of 
Jackson; his great fame as the hero of New- 
Orleans and as an Indian fighter for decades 
should exercise for him a dispensing power ; and 
did. The resolutions passed the Senate but 
failed in the House of Representatives. 

Fierce as had been the debate over the pas- 
sage of the resolution of censure, that over the 
reception by the Senate of the protest by- 
Andrew Jackson in answer was far more fierce. 
The opposition Senators succeeded in keeping 
the protest off the pages of the journal. 

Illness in the Summer of 1834. 

This session of Congress ended June 30, 1834 ; 
and Wright went home a sick man. During 
the summer he managed to improve in health; 
but never again was he a strong, well man. 
This is shown not only in the lessened force 
of his speeches, but also in such small matters 
as a feebler handwriting and an admission here 
and there in his letters that his farm work con- 
sisted mainly in seeing that his hired men 
worked or that he finds it necessary to be careful 
about his diet and sleep. Henceforth he de- 
clined all public dinners and was far less fre- 
quently away from his rooms at Washington 
or from his home at Canton upon visits to 
friends. There was no lessening of mental 
vigor; there was a decided improvement in 



SILAS WRIGHT 89 

clarity of vision. But the joy of living had 
lessened. 

The Power of Removal from Office. 

In the next session, the opposition Senators 
tried to take away the authority of the Presi- 
dent to remove officers in the executive branch. 
It was the same fight that had been waged in 
the first Senate when by his casting vote Vice- 
President Adams saved this power for the 
Presidency and by redoubling the interest of 
Washington in himself secured the succession 
to that office. It was the same fight that led 
to the impeachment of another ''Andy" after 
the Inter-State War. This bill passed the Sen- 
ate but was defeated in the ever-loyal House. 

This struggle involved the entire question of 
the control of Congress over the appointments 
to the executive branch. Each branch thinks 
that it should be supreme, but ours is *'a system 
of checks and balances" out of which the free- 
dom of the individual is delivered. 

The matter of tenure for life, as opposed to 
removal for cause not stated, with all inter- 
mediate degrees of tenure, has more than two 
sides. In American politics we have not yet 
arrived at a satisfactory and profitable conclu- 
sion upon this point. 



90 SILAS WRIGHT 

General Jackson and a War 
with France. 

The last big battle in the Twenty-third Con- 
gress raged over the question whether it was 
safe to entrust the President with an emergency 
fund of three million dollars in case the threat- 
ened war with France over the neglect of that 
nation, in a period of political unrest and 
change, to live up to its agreed payments of 
the treaty of 1831. Finally, Congress adjourned 
without making any provision for such an 
emergency. But this debate had served a pur- 
pose politically valuable to Silas Wright in that 
once more he came forward as the protagonist 
for ''Old Hickory. 



>> 



Abolitionism. 

In the next or Twenty-fourth Congress, Sena- 
tor Wright voted with the majority to exclude 
abolition literature from the mails. He did 
this in order to insure in 1836 the election of 
his friend Martin Van Buren as President. This 
vote of his, together with his vote against abol- 
ishing slavery in the District of Columbia, and 
his well-known opinion that, in order to change 
the principles upon which government legislates 
and operates, it is necessary to change the men, 
constitute what are called ''the stains" upon the 
escutcheon of Silas Wright. The first criticism 



SILAS WRIGHT 91 

is easily met in two ways. Militant abolition- 
ism was not merely anti-slavery but anti-con- 
stitutionalism. Its argument was this: The 
Federal Government permits slavery. Slavery 
is wicked. Therefore, the Government and the 
Constitution behind it are wicked. Away with 
such a Constitution! In the second place, 
Senator "Wright later pursued a course so 
strongly anti-slavery as completely to persuade 
the best of the abolitionists such as Whittier 
the poet. 

So long as there was unchallenged slavery in 
Maryland and in Virginia, slavery could not 
have been abolished in the District of Columbia. 
To suppose, then, that it could be was totally 
to ignore the facts of the social situation there. 

Abolition of slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia was the pet measure for trying the mettle 
of every new member of Congress. Upon it, 
as upon a rubber ring, the inexperienced mem- 
ber cut his first teeth. For four decades and 
more it was talked about and talked at with no 
seriousness on the part of any one save, per- 
haps, the new member. 

Wright was ready to receive the abolition 
movement into politics, in the fullness of time, 
to make it an issue. It was his friend Van Buren 
who ran upon the Free Sellers' ticket in 1848. 
Had Wright lived, there might have been no 
need of such a ticket! 

Such men as Wright made the North the land 



92 SILAS WEIGHT 

of hope to the slave. As John Pierpont sang in 
1840— 



"Star of the North, thou seem'st to me 
To burn before the Almighty's throne, 
To guide me, through the forests dim 
And vast, to liberty and HIM." 

Wright, however, was not so much the leader 
of reform as the wheelhorse of its practical leg- 
islative accomplishment. In other words, he 
was not a prophet, but a statesman. 

The Spoils System. 

But Wright was a spoilsman ! In respect to 
the higher directing offices, yes; for there is 
but one way surely to change measures, and 
this is to change the men. It is a characteristic 
of adults to have more or less fixed ideas. The 
formula, therefore, was — change the ideas by 
changing the men. 

It does not appear that Wright ever went 
practically or even theoretically to the extreme 
of the saying of his friend William L. Marcy: 
*'To the victors belong the spoils." The later 
record shows this perfectly. 

Yet Silas Wright was not an extreme civil 
service reformer. He had no idea that any man 
should have a vested right in any office, though 
but a clerkship on less than a thousand a year. 
To him an office with an income paid from taxes 
is not a property. He would have had no pa- 



SILAS WEIGHT 93 

tience with the modern notion of permanent 
tenure until disability and then a pension till 
death, and perhaps to one's wife and minor 
children thereafter. He lived in a different age 
when agricultural lands were accessible and 
cheap; he was indeed a proponent of the pre- 
emption homestead system as over against 
Hamilton's system of never selling plots of less 
than nine square miles. 

Speculation in 1835 and in 1836. 

And now was beginning to brew the terrible 
financial storm that we know as ''The Panic." 
The dispersion of the government deposits and 
the payment of three-fourths of the surplus to 
the States, or in other words, free banking with 
other people's money, had led to such a pyra- 
miding of purchases and of speculation in 
futures that men stopped work, potatoes went 
to two dollars a bushel, and much paper was 
used for promissory notes of banks as well as 
of individuals. Prices soared. New towns and 
additions to old towns were boomed. Steam- 
boat lines upon the rivers and steam engine 
lines upon the lands emitted vast quantities of 
stocks and bonds. 

The nation was gone crazy over future gains. 
Prospects were capitalized. Public lands were 
cheap. Men bought them with bank notes. The 
government officials left the payments in the 



94 SILAS WRIGHT 

banks as deposits ; and the bank officials loaned 
them out on promissory notes. Once in private 
hands, the city lots and the country farms were 
sold and resold at ever higher paper money 
and unlimited bank credit prices. The specu- 
lators lived gloriously on their paper profits 
and dreamed of yet greater gains. 

The sales of public lands were as follows, 
viz.: 1834, $4,800,000; 1835, $14,700,000; 1836, 
$24,800,000. The government had sold the land 
at $1.25 per acre. The same lands were soon 
marked up to $200,000,000 and the notes in pay- 
ment ran from 12 to 24 per cent, a year. 

Jackson asked for Real Money. 

On July 11, 1836, President Jackson issued 
his famous and critical ''Special Circular" re- 
quiring that thereafter all payments for lands 
be in gold and silver, intrinsic money of 
redemption. 

That fall Van Buren was elected President, 
and the Jacksonian Democratic tidal wave 
swept over even the Senate itself. Soon Silas 
Wright, as the Democratic Senate leader, be- 
came chairman of the Finance Committee. 

Nevertheless, both branches of Congress 
voted to ''repeal" the Special Circular; and 
President Andrew Jackson calmly ignored the 
repeal. His last official act, 11 :45 p. m., March 



SILAS WEIGHT 95 

3, 1837, was to send it back to the State Depart- 
ment unsigned. 

The Censure Expunged. 

The same session of Congress, however, 
passed a bill drawn by Wright reducing the 
tariff upon several items. The Senate passed 
a resolution to expunge from its record the 
censure secured by Clay a few years before. 
Andrew Jackson called this the greatest tri- 
umph of his life. Of course, Silas Wright of 
New York and Thomas Hart Benton of Mis- 
souri were the chief movers in this affair. 

Wright Re-elected Senator. 

Despite opposition within his own party from 
three directions, Wright was now elected Sena- 
tor from New York for a full term of six years. 
The bankers opposed him because of his sup- 
port of Andrew Jackson, an anti-bank Presi- 
dent. The canal politicians opposed him because 
as Comptroller of the State a few years before 
he had held up the building of probably un- 
profitable lateral canals. And some of the 
older party leaders opposed him as new and 
young and inclined to go his own gait. But 
his friends carried the party caucus; and the 
party carried the Legislature. 



96 SILAS WRIGHT 

The Panic of 1837. 

After the inauguration in March, 1837, "Old 
Hero" betook himself to the Hermitage at 
Nashville, Tennessee; and Martin Van Buren, 
too able fairly to be styled his "creature" and 
yet truly made politically by him, gracefully 
went into the White House. Upon his devoted 
head the financial tempest broke. Never was 
man politically more unlucky than "Little Van" 
thenceforth. 

The causes of "The Panic" were both general 
and specific. The general causes were specu- 
lation and a bad banking system, for bad as 
the United States Bank under Biddle was, wild- 
cat banking with State bank "shinplasters" 
as a feature was worse. In 1835 and in 1836 
our people had been large purchasers of goods 
from Europe, and London desired payment in 
gold. The foreign bankers refused bills of ex- 
change and sent everything of the kind to 
protest., 

The Acts of Congress distributing the sur- 
plus in the Treasury to the States required 
payment by the depositories in gold or silver, 
which depleted the coffers of the banks. 

And labor was growing dear, very dear, com- 
pared with the wages of earlier decades. 

It was in this period that Silas Wright dis- 
cussed carefully the relation of the wages of 



SILAS WEIGHT 97 

labor to the monetary system and to the ebb and 
tide of prosperity. Said he ; 

"No capitalist, whatever be his field, pays 
more for labor than will command such as he 
requires, be the profits of his business what 
they may. When the wheat of the farmer, or 
his wool, or his beef, doubles in value, he does 
not in consequence double the wages of his 
laborers. When the adventure of the merchant 
doubles the capital invested, he does not in con- 
sequence double the wages of his sailors and 
cartmen. * * * in prosperous times, labor is 
the last to advance; in times of adversity, 
employment at any rate of wages almost ceases. 
This compels the laborer at once to work for 
almost any wages he can get. ' ' 

Sound Money. 

Gold and silver, with subsidiary coins of baser 
metals, constitute the only proper money for the 
poor man, who usually also is ignorant and 
defenceless. The rich and intelligent man can 
understand the operations of pyramided green- 
backs and bank notes; but the poor man deals 
in the obvious, and government owes it to him 
to make his money good, perfectly good. 

What Silas Wright would have said of found- 
ing an empire of national banks upon a quick- 
sand of one billion dollars of national debts, and 
thea refusing to pay those debts lest the banks 



98 SILAS WRIGHT 

automatically cease to exist, any one who care- 
fully reads his views of conditions in 1837 can- 
not escape perceiving. One per cent, of the 
total wealth of the people of the United States 
is obligated nationally to found through debt a 
permanent banking system! Individuals are 
warned against debt; but the nation is kept in 
bondage to creditors. 

An Independent Treasury. 

For want of sufficient foresight by business 
men and by statesmen, the country that had 
sown the wind must now reap the whirlwind. 
The poor must riot for bread in the greatest 
business city of the land. 

The story in detail does not comport with 
the scale of this brief life of Silas Wright. The 
main facts of interest in his career are that 
"The Panic of 1837" caused him to be the 
leader in Congress for the complete separa- 
tion of government and banking through the 
service of an independent treasury. 

The Constitution of the United States spe- 
cifically declares that the Congress shall have 
power (Article I, Section 8) ''To coin money, 
regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, ' * 
but expressly reserves to the States all powers 
not delegated. Nowhere does the Constitution 
empower Congress to go into a banking busi- 
ness or even to charter a bank. Unquestion- 



SILAS WEIGHT 99 

ably the two National Banks — the first, char- 
tered in 1791, and the second, chartered in 1816 
— were unconstitutional. We all see this now, 
just as we all now see that the Missouri Com- 
promise of 1820 was unconstitutional, and as our 
younger citizens will live to see that a pro- 
tective tariff is unconstitutional, whether it is 
wise or not, righteous or not. 

But Martin Van Buren and Silas Wright 
were the first statesmen to see any way out of 
the dilemma as between little banks doing the 
government's necessary banking or one big 
bank, ''a mammoth monopoly," as the latter 
styled it. Probably Wright was the real origi- 
nator of the independent treasury plan. Upon 
this subject he wrote many letters and deliv- 
ered many speeches. By working hard upon it, 
he finally grew into an anti-corporation man. 
Let us see how he felt and what he thought. In 
August, 1837, he published in the St. Lawrence 
Republican two long letters, one relating to 
specie payment and the other to the independent 
treasury plan. 

Open Letters Upon Banking 
and Corporations. 

From the first letter: "The (bank) privi- 
lege of issuing, by express authority of law, 
their paper promises to pay gold and silver on 
demand as currency, to take the place of gold 



100 SILAS AVRIGHT 

and silver in the hands and pockets of the peo- 
ple, is nothing less than the delegation to them 
of one of the most delicate, important, and 
responsible prerogatives of the sovereignty of 
civil government. Their exemption from lia- 
bility to pay any description of their debts, 
beyond the mere amount of stock paid in to 
the bank, is an invidious privilege to these 
artificial corporations over those extended to 
natural persons, the citizens and freemen of 
our country, that would startle every honest 
mind not familiarized by custom and use to the 
legislative preference for soulless paper exist- 
ence over the persons of God's creation with 
hearts and souls and consciences and at least 
some sense of moral obligation. * * * 

"The bank that issues notes that it cannot 
redeem in specie * * * practices a fraud upon 
the public for which a natural person would be 
convicted of the crime of swindling. * * * 

*'For the last six or seven years, the people 
of this State, through their representatives in 
the Legislature have been much too indulgent 
in yielding to the cupidity of individuals, and 
the personal and unwearied solicitations of the 
interested for local bank charters." 

He recalls how the people of the Revolution- 
ary days suffered from depreciated currency 
and says that the troubles of 1837 are similar, 
though these concern not paper currency but 
credit instead of money; ''excessive banking 



SILAS WEIGHT 101 

and the cheapening of credits in every depart- 
ment of business." 

The functions of the banker are but two, no 
more. The first is to act as a judge of the prob- 
ability of the success of enterprises. The sec- 
ond is to act as a steward of already gathered 
wealth. He is an economic critic and treasurer. 
But he produces nothing. The uncritical banker 
and the spendthrift are dangerous. 

From the second letter : ' * The power of Con- 
gress over the currency and domestic exchanges 
of the country is confined to the collection and 
disbursement of the public revenues, and con- 
sists in the power to prescribe in what descrip- 
tion of currency those revenues shall be received 
and paid out. 

"The only currency known to the Constitu- 
tion is a currency of intrinsic value, a metallic 
currency, a currency of coin according to the 
value placed upon it by Congress. This is a fact 
too plain for contradiction or question. * * * 

''Twice a national bank has been tried; and 
twice have the people pronounced their verdict 
that it shall not have existence within our con- 
federacy; that its powers to produce expan- 
sions and contractions in the currency, and 
overtradings, speculations, panics, and press- 
ures are much superior to its powers to regu- 
late, restrain or sustain our circulating medium ; 
that the political dangers and evils arising out 
of it * * * far outweigh any benefits; that 



102 SILAS "WRIGHT 

the Constitution of the United States has not 
conferred upon Congress any power to charter 
such an institution; and that no charter shall 
emanate from the hands of their representa- 
tives. * * * 

**What then can Congress do? * * * Pro- 
duce a perfect and entire separation between 
the finances of the nation and all the banks of 
issue or discount. * * * We have tried the 
faith of these soulless existences, in all their 
forms of being, and that faith has always failed 
us in the hour of utmost need. Now let us try 
the faith of natural persons, of moral, ac- 
countable agents, of freemen. Let Congress 
trust the safekeeping of the public treasure 
with citizens as such and not as bank corpora- 
tions, with men responsible to itself, and not 
to a moneyed institution. Let collections into 
the national treasury be collections of money, 
not of irredeemable paper. 

'' Explode the mischievous doctrine, now so 
generally promulgated, that the merchant or 
the speculator has a right to the use of every 
dollar of money in the national treasury; and 
when overtrading shall unduly increase the 
revenue from customs or mad speculations 
swell the amounts received from sales of lands, 
let the accumulations of (%sh capital in the 
Treasury check these excesses before their bit- 
ter fruits are realized as now in the destruction 
of credit, the derangement and depreciation of 



SILAS WEIGHT 103 

the currency, the depression of prosperity, and 
the prostration of business generally." 

Eeplying to Senator Webster, January 30, 
1834, Wright said: ''Mr. President, while I 
approve highly of the open and manly ground 
taken by the Senator from Massachusetts, I 
differ from him toto coelo as to the remedy he 
proposes. There is no inducement that can pre- 
vail upon me to vote for a recharter of the 
Bank of the United States. I would oppose 
this bank upon the grounds of its flagrant vio- 
lations of the high trusts confided to it; but 
my objections are of a deeper and graver char- 
acter. I go against this bank, and against any 
and every bank to be incorporated by Congress, 
whether to be located at Philadelphia or New 
York or anywhere else within the twenty-four 
independent States that comprise this Confed- 
eracy, upon the broad ground that admits not 
of compromise — that Congress has not the 
power, by the Constitution, to incorporate such 
a bank." 

Those citizens who favor now or who think 
they favor a National Reserve Association or 
legalized ''money trust" as a substitute for 
the natural laws of supply and demand in 
money and for persons as bankers might do 
well to read these letters of Silas Wright. 

It is the old issue: Shall government be an 
agency of business, an instrument of prosper- 
ity? Or shall government be the supreme ex- 



104 SILAS WRIGHT 

pression of the popular will, the voice and action 
of all men? Government separated from pri- 
vate interest and advantage, other than the hire 
of its laborers, is that '4east government" 
which ''is the best government." 

The Fear of Corporations. 

The fear of banks by Silas Wright was due 
not only to their control of money, but also to 
their corporate nature. The plain man has 
always feared the money-lender, who toils not 
but reaps the first of the harvest. Yet so long 
as he was personal with a local home and fam- 
ily, the money-lender has been accessible even 
if obdurate and unfeeling ; to the plain man, such 
a money-dealer has been comprehensible even 
if disagreeable when he withholds or seeks to 
recover his money. But the money-lending cor- 
poration is a much more complex matter. The 
borrower goes from one officer to another, who 
evade or refer responsibility ; at this end of the 
transaction he meets individuals, but when pay- 
ment is due the entire aggregation becomes 
collector. 

The limited liability feature of the corpora- 
tion, by which the stockholders are free to make 
unlimited gains, but have limited their losses to 
their cash investments, has always worried up- 
right and downright men of the Silas Wright 
type. Here is a man personally rich, a stock- 



SILAS WRIGHT 105 

holder in an insolvent corporation that will not 
pay a debtor who may be in need; and this 
debtor has no recourse. 

What Silas Wright saw was that the corpora- 
tion gives to the rich a new and additional ad- 
vantage. In figures, he might have put the mat- 
ter in this way, and he was apt to put such 
matters into figures : A capitalist has one hun- 
dred thousand dollars, which he invests in equal 
parts in four corporations. Three succeed and 
win for him seventy-five thousand dollars more ; 
but the fourth goes bankrupt, owing five or ten 
times as much as its assets, for corporations 
have a way for running down to the lowest limit 
of credit against debt. By the corporation sys- 
tem the capitalist is worth one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars now, and has lost only 
twenty-five thousand dollars. But others in the 
world through the failure of the fourth of his 
corporations may be a full quarter million of 
dollars the poorer, and partly because of this 
rich man, who does not now need to pay. 

To Wright it seemed that the world is paying 
too high a price for the one excellence of the 
corporation, that it induces more freedom of 
enterprise. Often a man will risk a hundred 
or a hundred thousand dollars upon an under- 
taking, when not for a moment would he con- 
sider risking his entire property, as he does 
when he operates as an individual or in a firm. 

At the present time, what we are trying to 



106 SILAS WEIGHT 

do is to retain in part this feature while securing 
to the creditors of corporations much more 
safety. This we have measurably secured now 
with our National Banks with reference to their 
depositors through the double responsibility of 
each shareholder. And that principle is sure 
to be extended in an age when the corporation 
plan is being worked beyond the limits each way 
of largeness and of triviality of undertaking — 
from the billion and a half dollar trust to the in- 
corporated fruit-stand upon the corner. 

What with publicity and regulation, we may 
yet solve what seemed to Wright a most unfor- 
tunate and dubious legal, political, financial and 
social complex of problems. 

The Divorce of Government 
and Banking. 

The bills that Wright presented were defeat- 
ed in September, 1837 ; in December of the same 
year, and again in the next Congress. But upon 
July 4, 1840, President Van Buren joyfully 
signed an independent treasury bill, and Silas 
Wright had won his greatest fight, that for the 
freedom of the government and of the people 
from bankers. It matters little that the bill 
for an independent treasury was repealed two 
years later, for it was soon reenacted and re- 
mains to this day the law of the land. 

That same year Van Buren was defeated for 



SILAS WRIGHT 107 

reelection to the Presidency. The Panic of 1837 
had made him unpopular. 

William Henry Harrison died within a month 
of his inauguration. Some persons attribute 
his death to the horde of Whig office-seekers 
brought in by the new railroads ; others charge 
it to a cold rain in a new climate bringing on 
pneumonia, which prevails in the District of 
Columbia. 

John Tyler, his successor, lost his first wife 
within the year after he became President. 
This affliction paralyzed a judgment never de- 
cisive. Two years later, he married again ; but 
this marriage, though personally happy, did 
not restore his political fortunes. 

The Vetoes by John Tyler. 

In August, 1841, the Whig Congress passed 
a bill chartering a national bank; and John 
Tyler of Virginia, though he was an anti-Jack- 
son Democrat, had to choose between his hatred 
of Old Hickory and his political philosophy of 
State's rights and strict construction. He 
promptly vetoed the bill. Next, Congress 
passed a bill creating a pseudo-bank styled a 
"fiscal corporation" or ''fiscal agent." This 
also Tyler promptly vetoed. Then all of his 
Cabinet resigned save Daniel Webster, Secre- 
tary of State, 

And the Whigs began a plot to force the 



108 SILAS WRIGHT 

resignation of Tyler and to put in Webster or 
some other bank man. 

The central bank crowd were indeed in fear- 
ful case. When the Bank of the United States 
failed to get its new charter, it still had over 
fifty millions on deposit. It spent four hun- 
dred thousand dollars in bribing the Pennsyl- 
vania Legislature to give it a charter, and suc- 
ceeded. But it failed in 1837; again in 1839, 
and went to its final ruin in February, 1841. 
Biddle died in 1844. 

The Hamilton school, as opposed to the Gal- 
latin school, write much of the war made by 
Jackson upon the bank, but sound history can- 
not fail to record that this war was like any 
other war made upon legalized crime. The 
standpatters for tilings as they are never like 
to draw distinctions between law-honestv and 
real honesty. The later history of Biddle and 
the bank shows that the war by Jackson was a 
holy war proceeding from righteous indigna- 
tion. SjTnpathy with crime is maudlin. 

But Tyler and men in Congress like Benton 
and Wright saw clearly that in decentralized 
banking lay the security of American com- 
merce. 

The five Presidents under whom Silas 
Wright saw office in Washington were John 
Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van 
Buren, William Henry Harrison, and John 
Tyler. As was natural, he understood best the 



SILAS WEIGHT 109 

later ones, for he himself was growing older 
and wiser. His account of John Tyler is vivid. 
August 21, 1841, he wrote to A. C. Flagg: ''If 
he (Tyler) had a single finger nail of Old 
Hickory upon his whole frail system, this 
(threat to withhold appropriations) would 
delight him, but unfortunately * * * the mel- 
ancholy fact is he is frightened to death at the 
recoil of his own gun, and is trembling under 
the apprehension that they will send to him 
their exchange bank (bill). He has said to 
several that it will not do for him to veto an- 
other bill, and supplicatingly asked in God's 
name what shall be done? Yet at other times, 
when his passions become aroused he talks, as 
I learn, as brave as a lion. * * * His intimate 
friends hope to be able to hold him up, but they 
hope with great fear. ' ' 

Tyler did better than his friends feared; he 
vetoed the bill establishing what Benton styled 
''the fiscal corporosity." 

A bankruptcy law was passed and signed 
only to be repealed, however, within two years 
by the same Congress. 

On March 31, 1842, Henry Clay resigned in 
order to retire (temporarily, as it proved) to 
private life. Webster was in the Cabinet. 
There was more room now for Wright in the 
Senate. 

Tyler then proceeded to veto one after the 
other two tariff bills, in each case pleasing 



110 SILAS WEIGHT 

Senator Wright. At last, the Act of 1842 with 
an average duty of thirty-two per cent, passed 
the Senate and the House by one majority in 
each case, Wright voting for it because the 
treasury was empty. Wool was raised thereby 
from twenty to thirty-two per cent. 

''Pulling the wool over men's eyes" is an 
adage centuries old; but it has fitted perfectly 
into all American tariff history. Shall the man- 
ufacturer know a fond paternal government 
while the farmer is coldly cast out of the house- 
hold? 

Jackson Recovers His Fine. 

In February, 1843, Wright was again re- 
elected by the State Legislature to the Senate. 
Just a year later Congress passed the bill re- 
funding to General Jackson a thousand dollar 
fine with interest; he had paid it shortly after 
the battle of New Orleans for a technical 
offence against the civil authorities. 

The amount repaid was $2,700. He had vio- 
lated a habeas corpus issued on behalf of a 
French citizen. It was a typical war case. And 
Lincoln remembered it in his contest with Taney 
in 1861-5. 

Postage Reduced. 

Senator Wright also secured the passage of 
a law reducing the postage rates — as now could 
easily be done because of the cheaper service 
of the new steam railways and steamships. 



SILAS WEIGHT 111 

The Tariff Again. 

Many, many ''able arguments" have been 
delivered upon the subject of the tariff in the 
Senate and House ; but no speech, not even that 
of Senator Dolliver in 1909, more adequately 
and fairly covers the ground than the speech 
of Senator Wright delivered April 19 and 23, 
1844. A few paragraphs suffice to show the 
lucidity and vigor and breadth of this dis- 
cussion : 

"I will premise that it is the settled policy 
of the Government and people of this country to 
raise by duties upon imports so much revenue 
as the public treasury shall require. * * * 
There may be individuals who believe it would 
be more equal and economical to raise this reve- 
nue by direct taxation upon the property of 
the country as a theoretical proposition; but 
I do not suppose that a single individual in the 
whole country contemplates a change from this 
indirect taxation to a system of direct taxation 
in order in a time of peace to raise the reve- 
nues necessary for the support of the Gov- 
ernment. * * * 

"First, then, every duty is necessarily pro- 
tective to some extent; because the foreign 
article must pay the duty, and the domestic 
article does not. In this respect it is imma- 
terial whether the producer of the article in 
the foreign country or the consumer of it in 



112 SILAS WRIGHT 

this, pay the duty. In either case, by enhanced 
price, the domestic producer reaps the ad- 
vantage. 

"Second, every duty is to an extent neces- 
sarily prohibitive. Any branch of trade wholly 
free from taxation will be entered into more 
readily and carried on more extensively than 
a trade that is taxed. 

"Third, that rate of duty, upon any given 
article of import, which will yield the largest 
total amount of revenue, is the highest that 
article will bear, and affords the highest pro- 
tection that can be given to it, when of domes- 
tic production, consequently with the object of 
raising revenue. Any less rate of duty is, of 
course, within the revenue range. Within this, 
the protection atforded is incidental to the reve- 
nue power of the duty; and if the revenue be 
required, the protection is a necessary and 
unavoidable incident, and cannot afford to any 
interest just ground of complaint. This I con- 
sider the true limit of the claim and right of 
protection. 

"Fourth, every duty is a protective as con- 
tradistinguished from a revenue duty, when its 
prohibitive powers become paramount to its 
revenue powers. * * * Now the positions are 
reversed; and the revenue derived, if any, has 
become a mere incident to the protection af- 
forded. This is making protection the principal 
and revenue the incident. * * * Such protec- 



SILAS WEIGHT 113 

tion is prohibition, and the destruction of 
revenue. * * * 

' ' The power to discriminate as to the articles 
to be taxed, and as to the rate of tax to be 
imposed upon each, within the range of revenue 
duties, I consider perfect and unquestionable; 
and whether it should be exercised to favor 
necessaries at the expense of luxuries, the poor 
at the expense of the rich, to extend incidental 
protection to a domestic interest against the 
too strong competition of a foreign competing 
interest, or for any similar object, appear to 
me to be questions purely of legislative dis- 
cretion, and not at all of constitutional power. 
* * * It may be exercised against necessaries 
to favor luxuries; against the poor to favor 
the rich; against domestic interests to favor 
foreign ; or in any other perverted manner ; but 
such liability to abuse does not disprove the 
existence of the power. ' ' 

Proceeding minutely into the financial opera- 
tions of the existing law, he arrived at this 
conclusion: ''My examinations have satisfied 
me that a range of duties up to 33 per cent, is 
as high as most articles of import will bear 
consistently with the revenue principle." 

Two years later, in 1846, a so-called "free 
trade tariff" was enacted. There followed 
nearly ten years of uncommon prosperity, dur- 
ing which, according to the old policy of Gal- 
latin, the national debt was again reduced. 



114 SILAS WEIGHT 

A New Epoch Arrives. 

The same problems seldom are long before a 
nation for consideration and solution. A new 
epoch was now at hand. It concerned the an- 
nexation of Texas and with the annexation an 
inevitable war with Mexico. Tyler was for 
annexation. Thereby he hoped to win a nomi- 
nation for the Presidency. Martin Van Buren, 
who had been defeated in 1840 by Harrison, 
was against annexation because it meant the 
extension and strengthening of slavery. He 
failed to get the necessary two-thirds vote of 
a Democratic convention; and Polk, who did 
favor the annexation of Texas, and was the 
right hand of the aged statesman of the Her- 
mitage, was nominated. 

Clay was nominated by the Whigs. He op- 
posed the annexation of Texas. 

To be sure of carrying the State of New 
York, the Polk leaders secured the nomination 
of Silas Wright to be Governor of New York, 
following his declination of a nomination as 
Vice-President. Wright got his news by the 
new telegraph and refused to believe it until 
confirmation by mail! 

Yet, more than any one else in the Senate, 
Wright had forwarded the government grant 
for a telegraph line to help Morse, as the in- 
ventor himself always said. 

In this period Wright might also have become 



SILAS WEIGHT 115 

a United States Supreme Court Justice or a 
Cabiuet Secretary. The world was wide open 
to his talents. 

Senatorship or Governorship ? 

The situation is worth considering. Daniel 
Webster twice resigned from the United States 
Senate as the member from Massachusetts to 
become Secretary of State; but Silas Wright 
(of the same Yankee blood and early rearing) 
resigned a Senatorship to become Governor of 
New York, and declined a Cabinet Secretary- 
ship. He had refused the Justiceship saying 
that the people had assigned him to an elective 
office, and that he would do their will. 

Was it a question of rank or of party prin- 
ciple and obligation that led Silas Wright to 
make what proved to be an ultimately fatal 
political error? 

Unquestionably, with any ordinary candidate 
for Governor running with them, Polk and 
Dallas would have lost New York. Silas Wright 
could save them ; and did. All his party friends 
insisted upon his laying aside the four years 
of his term yet to run and going into the battle 
to save the Democracy in New York. He was 
elected by over ten thousand plurality. 



116 SILAS WEIGHT 

The Anti-Renters. 

There was a new epoch also in New York 
State. The question of the rights of tenants to 
leaseholds and of landlords to feudal rents had 
gone out of the courts into the arena of bullets, 
of midnight arson and assassination, and of 
political intrigues correspondingly villainous. 

What was left in law and tradition of the 
patroons was largely to be done away. We 
were not to have manors and manorial barons 
in the Empire State. The Anti-Renters were 
not protesting against such rents as we know 
to-day, but rents of a feudal nature with per- 
sonal service and duty. 

A new and economic regime was to be estab- 
lished; and an old social order was passing 
away in blood and feud. 

It was before the new Governor to maintain 
order. Delaware County especially was in the 
hands of the Anti-Renters; ten other counties 
were disaffected. Though upon legal and ethi- 
cal grounds Silas Wright sympathized with 
the democratic spirit of the Anti-Renters, his 
first duty was to reestablish social peace. Mur- 
der and threat to murder must cease. Private 
war should end. And with the militia Gover- 
nor Wright put down the rioting, broke up the 
gangs of masked marauders and '' Indians," 
and made life and property safe. And then he 
recommended legal reforms. 



SILAS WRIGHT 117 

A Very Careful Governor. 

The Governor did other things also. He tried 
to keep down the State debt and to prevent a 
State tax. He tried to prevent the incorpora- 
tion of a multitude of little State banks lest 
honest persons of small means be defrauded by- 
dishonest or incompetent bank-managers; and 
in banking to be incompetent is virtually to be 
dishonest. 

The Governor had observed that the day of 
the completion of public works was always to- 
morrow. The Erie Canal is done? No. Make 
it larger. One public undertaking nearing com- 
pletion? Start another. One undertaking is 
productive; try another, and charge its costs 
and interest to the former. Bank not upon the 
present but upon the future. And he predicted 
insolvency again like that which actually had 
come upon the State Government in 1841. 

He was an excellent financier and understood 
the motives of human nature in the circum- 
stances. Said he in his first message to the 
Legislature, — "The money-lender could draw 
as accurate a distinction as the people them- 
selves between their means and their anticipa- 
tions; when the means should have been ex- 
hausted, the anticipations might not command 
the required capital even to test their soundness 
or their fallacy." 

With the Whigs he had no sympathy. They 



118 SILAS WRiaHT 

represented the speculative business men, the 
spenders. 

As to the Extension of Slavery. 

He was asked and urged and forced into de- 
claring himself as to the Wilmot Proviso, a na- 
tional issue; according to the proviso of the 
young Pennsylvania legislator in Congress no 
new territory should be acquired for the ex- 
tension of slavery, and no money paid accord- 
ingly. It was not a New York State question. 
For New York, Governor William H. Seward 
had already spoken upon the entire slavery is- 
sue in connection with various runaway slaves. 
New York was against slavery. But Silas 
Wright spoke decisively ; he was for the Wilmot 
Proviso. 

Senator Benton stvled the whole situation, 
Texas and the War and the Proviso, "a tragedy 
of errors." All the North agreed. 

The State Convention of 1846. 

There came up also the question of a conven- 
tion upon the State Constitution, which many 
Democrats believed was in need of revision. 
The bankers, the politicians and the canal con- 
tractors were all against the convention. Gov- 
ernor Wright favored it. Among the proposi- 
tions was one not to permit the Legislature and 



SILAS WRIGHT 119 

Governor to make a State debt exceeding a mil- 
lion dollars ; all over this should be passed by a 
popular referendum. Another was to submit 
more of the offices to popular election and to re- 
duce the number of offices filled by appointment, 
including the judiciary ; that is, to lengthen the 
ballot. The Governor favored both proposi- 
tions. 

Since 1894 New York State has had a Consti- 
tutional provision for a convention every twenty 
years. Wright favored such constant recourse 
to the people. He was a democrat through and 
through. Short terms for offices, long ballot, 
frequent reference to the people, economy in ex- 
penditures, government, therefore, fresh and 
strong for the people according to their will and 
at low cost, freedom of private initiative and en- 
terprise ; such was his program. 

Now, we hear much of long terms and a short 
ballot, liberal expenditures for the general wel- 
fare, government by experts with permanent 
legislative commissions to advise and even to 
direct, a helpful, friendly, strong and active gov- 
ernment. Such was not the program of Silas 
Wright. 

Defeated for Re-election 
as Governor. 

By 1846 Calhoun had his will; Texas was 
annexed and slavery could go forward, and war 



/ 



120 SILAS WRIGHr 

must come. Calhoun was never President : but 
though ''Old Hero" made Polk President, he 
did the will of the South Carolinian! Destiny 
was manifest. We were to become a very great 
nation. Mexico must be trimmed. 

Palo Alto was fought in May, 1846, and the 
Mexican War was on. The Northern "dough- 
faces" opposed the war on principle but in prac- 
tice voted money and supplies. No Northerners 
believed in the war. 

In the fall of the year, Wright was nominated 
again ; but was defeated by eleven thousand plu- 
rality. The causes of the defeat were these. 

First of all, the North meant to repudiate the 
party that was prosecuting the war ; and Wright 
was a Democrat. 

In the second place, there had grown up in 
the State two factions, the Barnburners or radi- 
cals and the Hunkers or conservatives. The 
Hunkers bore manj'' grudges against Wright. 
One was that when he was Comptroller, he had 
favored a one-mill-in-the-dollar State tax in- 
stead of borrowing the money to meet a deficit. 
''Pay as you go" was his motto. Credit is a 
bribe to extravagance. Another was that he de- 
sired to leave the question of the making of big 
debts to the decision of the people, not of the 
ruling capitalists and of their politicians and 
lobbyists. A third was that he had opposed 
canal construction bevond the sure revenue re- 
turns. 



SILAS WRIGHT 121 

In the third place, Governor Wright had 
pleased neither the Anti-Renters nor the Land- 
lords. Indeed, the agitation was to continue for 
a decade to come. In the old patroon regions of 
the State he lost votes from both sides. In the 
fourth place Polk and the administration at 
Washington were against him because he had 
opposed their measures. There were new par- 
ties in the field with State tickets, — Abolition- 
ists, Native Americans, and certain radical re- 
formers seeking to secure to every family a 
home with land. 

The first were very active. To their incan- 
descent zeal we owe the forcing of the issue. 
Wright, however, could not be a fanatic; like 
Lincoln, he was anti-slavery ; but he expected to 
see the evil cured without the surgery of war. 
Herein he failed as a prophet. 

The Native Americans were frightened over 
the large immigration of foreigners. Nor were 
they wholly in error. Foreigners and the sons 
of foreigners were to slay three Presidents, to 
seek to slay a fourth and to wound an ex-Presi- 
dent. This asylum for the oppressed of Europe 
has become a retreat for enemies of even demo- 
cratic government. 

As for the land reformers, they mistook a 
right cause for an issue. Such Western States 
as Oklahoma and California have adopted much 
of their program. 

Other causes also were in operation. Wright 



122 SILAS WRIGHT 

had been before the people a long time ; and the 
people are very apt, in sheer weariness, to drop 
a man with a long record, simply for a change. 
Under the circumstances, he could not win 
against an eager competitor, John Young. 

He had expressed himself at length upon the 
tariff question even while Governor. His ex- 
plication was remarkably clear. He favored a 
tariff for revenue with such protection as was in- 
cidental but against a prohibitive tariff. He was 
not enough of a free trader to please that fac- 
tion and too little of a protectionist to please the 
manufacturers. 

It did not help him that though no civil service 
reformer, when he became Governor, he left 
many officers and clerks as he found them. In 
several instances, he even appointed known po- 
litical opponents. For this, members of his own 
party objected to him ; and his opponents within 
and without the party criticized him as ''too 
easy" or as ''too politic," according to their 
own temperaments, dispositions and views. 

At Home. 

As soon as his term was over, the statesman 
went home to Canton delighted to have a chance 
to rest from public life. There he would be not 
a lawyer but a woodsman and farmer, poor and 
human as ever. 

It is interesting to know that in February he 
drove home from Utica, a three days ' ride, in a 



SILAS WEIGHT 123 

lumber sleigh to Canton ; and that she whom he 
always called his "dear wife" rode all the way 
beside him through the snow carrying a favorite 
bird, well wrapped up, in her lap ! 

Later in this year, 1847, in reply to an invi- 
tation from a friend in Maine to make him a 
visit, the former Governor wrote, — ''I cannot 
make a visit to you this year. I have become a 
farmer in earnest, and I find little leisure for 
recreation. I labor steadily, and enjoy my food 
and sleep as no politician can. My land is new 
and hard to work ; so that I have not the pleas- 
ure of show and appearance, but a call for the 
more work. Even if my business would permit, 
I should not dare to travel this year, as I should 
be suspected of doing it for sinister purposes, 
which would destroy to me all the pleasures of 
journeying, and cause me to be received and 
treated as a moving beggar, not for bread, which 
might be excused, but for favors I do not ask. 
After this year I shall be relieved from this em- 
barrassment, and then I hope the time may come 
when I can visit your State and yourself and 
family, and have the pleasure of fishing with 
you for cod, without the suspicion of being a 
fisher of men." 

Perhaps His Greatest Achievements. 

History, perhaps, often fails to record what 
a statesman or other prominent actor upon the 



124 SILAS WRIGHT 

stage of the human theatre prevented from 
coming to pass. There was one such achieve- 
ment by negation to be attributed almost solely 
to Silas Wright, upon which he prided himself 
— so far as he ever took pride in anything — and 
for which we should hold him in grateful mem- 
ory. He prevented Congress from passing bills 
to give away the proceeds of the public lands 
to the several States. 

This was a favorite proposition of Henry 
Clay, who at times came very near being a veri- 
table mountebank of politics. The notion was 
not to cede to the States whatever public lands 
held by the Union happened to be within their 
respective borders ; but to pay over to them all 
pro rata of population the cash proceeds from 
the sales of lands. Of course, .to do this would 
have been to put the States under dependent 
obligation to the Union, to knock awry all their 
financial budgets, and to make the Union per- 
manent through its bounty. 

The effects of such a policy would have been 
many. The States would have lost the sense of 
responsibility and the habit of self-help. The 
great work, by no means all honestly carried 
out, of assisting the rapid development of trans- 
continental railroads, would have been less pos- 
sible and perhaps impossible. Homesteading 
and preemption would have been carried out 
upon probably less wise and liberal lines. And 
for a time, at least, the central government 



SILAS WEIGHT 125 

would have seemed to be to the citizens almost 
all-in-all. State enterprise would have been 
paralyzed. 

Upon a small scale, exactly this has happened 
lately in New Jersey through the distribution to 
the counties of some three millions annually 
from the State corporation tax. 

This policy Silas Wright fought year after 
year in a running fight ; and steadily won. 

Wright also contributed powerfully to that 
happy solution of the problem of internal im- 
provements at government cost which suits us, 
all know, theoretically. J. Q. Adams and his 
political sponsors and forbears believed in a 
paternal government at Washington that would 
fix up a local waterway or run a good road 
wherever and whenever it was called for. The 
notion lingered in the mind of Clay as a beau- 
tiful vision. Wright would have naught of this. 
Let the communities themselves or the States 
attend to such matters. Better still, let them 
be solved by private enterprise. 

Now, we all agree, — theoretically, — that only 
coast and tidewater, the Great Lakes and the 
greater rivers, should be cared for and trans- 
portation be developed upon them at the cost of 
the central government. 

In this matter the persistent, quiet negative 
of the New York Senator kept the ship of state 
out of many a poor harbor and tidal river and 



126 SILAS WRIGHT 

off the rocks of private pillage, which is public 
plunder. 

Practically, however, we have not yet found 
how to manage our river and harbor appro- 
priation bills, and in a confession of shame we 
call them ''pork bills." We have the principle 
secure that Silas Wright had stated long 
ago, and had lived up to it consistently. He no 
more asked special favors for up-State New 
York or for New York as a whole in internal 
improvements than he asked prohibitive tariffs 
for New York manufacturers. 

Overwork, Mental and Physical. 

Being weak from too sedentary a career, fa- 
tigued from official cares, with health broken by 
changes between the climates of Washington, 
of Albany and of Canton, and worn down with 
the strain of heavy public campaigning and 
platform speaking in the last few years, he 
realized that he was far from well. He had be- 
come corpulent and sluggish. In letter after 
letter to friends, he explained that he worked out 
doors all day, and in the evenings was too tired 
for correspondence. Yet in this period he wrote 
one of his finest letters, advocating ''internal 
improvements ' ' upon ' ' the inland seas. ' ' Here, 
as usual, he had the statesman's vision. 

In the bracing air of the Adirondack region, 
he became stronger. In the summer he under- 
took to do a farm laborer's work at haying. 



SILAS WRIGHT 127 

Late in August lie had attacks of faintness that 
he ignored. From the third of these attacks 
of heart failure, despite the attendance of a 
physician, at noon, August 27, 1847, Wright 
suddenly died. A few days before he had pre- 
dicted his own death ! Trjdng to avoid a collapse, 
his very activity had caused it. The case is 
strangely parallel with that of Senator John- 
athan P. Dolliver, who died at the same age of 
the same cause under the same circumstances in 
1909 ; and for this cause lost the Presidency. 

These are pretty safe rules : never to change 
suddenly the habits of years; not to burn the 
candle at both ends; and, after fifty, to watch 
the heart carefully. But Wright had never been 
solicitous for his own health. 

His death ended a powerful though quiet 
movement in the Democratic party to nominate 
him for President. 

Of estate, he left to his wife a small frame 
house and a half-developed farm and a few 
credits, in all not five thousand dollars worth 
of property ; but he left no debts whatever. He 
had paid cash always ; he had never bought any- 
thing until he had the wherewithal to pay. 

Such was the man to whom the merchants of 
New York were about to present when defeated 
and out of office and working as a farmer a sil- 
ver service that cost twenty thousand dollars. 
Why? Out of that sheer respect which is one of 
the finest qualities of our human nature. 



128 SILAS WRIGHT 

By his life, Silas Wright had shown the truth 
of his own principle that one who considers first 
and only the general good does in fact most 
help each and every honest interest and person. 

With a natural instinct for the good, he had 
learned to think and to act upon principle. Not 
often is a man at once considerate and cour- 
ageous; strong in emotions, in intelligence and 
in will. As a statesman, it was never the for- 
tune of Wright to be exploited either by his 
party or by a faction of friends. As for self- 
exploitation, of that he was incapable. In these 
respects he differed wholly from Webster, Jack- 
son and Clay. The Whig party made Webster ; 
his Western and Southern friends made Jack- 
son ; and Clay maneuvered himself to the front. 
He was not histrionic, dramatic, tremendous, 
like Benton. He had none of the cool intensity 
of Calhoun. But he was far more reliable than 
any of these; he pursued ideals, but he pur- 
sued them dispassionately. His finest trait of 
disposition was that he loved even his most 
strenuous opponents ; and they all admired him. 
He was quite as able an executive as he was 
legislator. As Comptroller and as Governor he 
made a record with which there is little in the 
careers of these, his peers, to be compared. 

New York State may well be proud that this 
member of her household by his own choice be- 
came her own son by her admiring adoption. 



AUG 25 1913 



